The death penalty has become a political tool, not a measure of justice.
In 2025, humanity crossed a grim threshold: at least 2,707 people were put to death by their governments, the highest toll in forty-four years. Iran alone accounts for nearly four out of every five of those deaths, a figure that more than doubled in a single year. Amnesty International's annual reckoning reveals not a world grappling earnestly with justice, but one in which the death penalty has been quietly repurposed — by a handful of concentrated regimes — as an instrument of political control and the performance of state power.
- Global executions surged by more than two-thirds in a single year, shattering a four-decade record and signaling something more than a statistical anomaly.
- Iran's execution count more than doubled to at least 2,159, a deliberate escalation timed to a broader domestic crackdown on dissent and opposition.
- Countries from Saudi Arabia to the United States nearly doubled their execution rates, each framing the death penalty as a solution to public safety — a narrative Amnesty International calls a political fiction.
- Amnesty International identifies a common thread: the surge is concentrated in states where civil society is restricted, independent voices are suppressed, and governments are consolidating power.
- The international community now faces a defining question — whether this represents a new authoritarian normal or a moment that demands coordinated global resistance.
En 2025, al menos 2.707 personas fueron ejecutadas en todo el mundo, la cifra más alta en cuarenta y cuatro años. Irán fue responsable de más de 2.159 de esas muertes, más del doble que el año anterior y el número más elevado en ese país en décadas. Amnistía Internacional publicó estos datos en su informe anual sobre la pena de muerte, y lo que revelan va más allá de las estadísticas: los gobiernos están utilizando la ejecución no como último recurso, sino como instrumento de control.
El aumento no fue uniforme, pero sí generalizado. Arabia Saudí llevó a cabo al menos 356 ejecuciones, muchas por delitos relacionados con drogas. Kuwait casi triplicó su cifra, de seis a diecisiete. Egipto casi la duplicó. Estados Unidos ejecutó a cuarenta y siete personas, casi el doble que en 2024. Singapur pasó de nueve a diecisiete. En todos estos casos, Amnistía Internacional identifica un patrón: la pena de muerte colocada al centro de narrativas políticas sobre seguridad pública y mano dura, utilizadas por gobiernos que buscan proyectar poder y silenciar la disidencia.
El caso de Irán es especialmente revelador. La escalada se produjo en paralelo a una consolidación del poder institucional y a una reducción del espacio para las voces opositoras. No se trata de decisiones aisladas, sino de una política deliberada. Y el panorama global que emerge es el de una pena de muerte concentrada en un puñado de regímenes — con Irán representando casi el ochenta por ciento del total mundial — donde las libertades civiles están bajo presión y el Estado ha decidido que matar sirve a sus intereses políticos.
Detrás de cada número hay una vida, una familia, una comunidad. La pregunta que deja el informe de Amnistía Internacional es si este repunte marca una nueva normalidad o un pico temporal — y si la comunidad internacional tiene voluntad real de responder a gobiernos que han convertido la ejecución en una herramienta de represión.
The world executed at least 2,707 people in 2025, the highest toll in forty-four years. Iran alone was responsible for more than 2,159 of those deaths—a figure that more than doubled from the previous year and represents the highest number of executions there in decades. Amnesty International released these numbers on Monday in its annual report on capital punishment, and the data tells a story about how governments are using the death penalty not as a last resort but as a tool of control.
The surge is staggering when you look at the year-over-year change. Compared to 2024, executions worldwide jumped by more than two-thirds. That acceleration did not happen evenly across the globe. Saudi Arabia carried out at least 356 executions, many of them for drug-related offenses. Kuwait nearly tripled its executions, from six to seventeen. Egypt almost doubled its count, from thirteen to twenty-three. The United States executed forty-seven people, nearly double the twenty-five from 2024. Singapore went from nine to seventeen.
What Amnesty International found beneath these numbers is a pattern. Governments in multiple countries have placed capital punishment at the center of what the organization calls false narratives about public safety and tough-on-crime governance. The death penalty, in other words, has become a political tool—a way for authorities to project state power, exercise control, and score points with voters who fear crime. This strategy appears most pronounced in countries where governments have tightened their grip on power, restricted the space for civil society to operate, and worked to silence dissent.
Iran's numbers are particularly stark. The country's execution rate more than doubled in a single year, suggesting a dramatic escalation in capital punishment as part of a broader crackdown. The timing matters: this surge comes as Iran has consolidated control over its institutions and narrowed the room for opposition voices. The executions are not random; they reflect deliberate policy choices by authorities who have decided that the death penalty serves their interests in maintaining order and demonstrating strength.
The global picture reveals a troubling concentration. A handful of countries account for the vast majority of executions worldwide. Iran alone represents nearly eighty percent of the global total. This is not a world where capital punishment is evenly distributed or applied as a rare measure of last resort. Instead, it is concentrated in specific regimes that have used it as an instrument of state control. Amnesty International's report makes clear that the countries driving this surge are precisely those where civil liberties are under pressure, where independent voices face suppression, and where the government has moved to consolidate power.
The human cost is abstract until you try to hold it in your mind: 2,707 people. More than two thousand of them in one country in a single year. These are not hypothetical numbers or policy debates. They represent individual deaths, families, communities. And the trend is moving in the wrong direction. As authoritarian governments have found that capital punishment serves their political purposes, they have escalated its use. The question now is whether this represents a new normal or a temporary spike—and whether the international community has the will to push back against governments that are using the death penalty as a tool of repression rather than justice.
Citações Notáveis
Authorities in multiple countries placed capital punishment at the center of false narratives about public safety and tough-on-crime governance to exercise control and project state power.— Amnesty International
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did Iran's executions more than double in a single year? That's not a gradual shift—that's a deliberate change in policy.
The timing tells you something. Iran didn't suddenly discover more criminals. What changed was the political environment. The government tightened its control, narrowed space for dissent, and decided the death penalty served its interests in projecting strength and maintaining order.
So Amnesty International is saying this isn't about crime rates at all—it's about politics.
Exactly. They found that governments are using capital punishment as a narrative tool. They tell their citizens: we are tough on crime, we are strong, we are in control. The death penalty becomes propaganda dressed up as justice.
But other countries also increased executions. Is this a global trend or is Iran the outlier?
Iran is the outlier in scale, but the pattern is real. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, the US, Singapore—they all escalated. What they have in common is that the countries with the biggest increases tend to be the ones where civil society is being restricted and dissent is being silenced.
That's a serious accusation. Are you saying democracies don't use the death penalty this way?
The data suggests something different happens in places where power is checked and courts are independent. The surge is concentrated in regimes where the government has consolidated control. That's the pattern Amnesty found.