Global executions surge 30% in 2023, with Iran leading amid drug war escalation

The numbers arrived on a Wednesday in May, delivered by Amnesty International in its annual accounting of state killing around the world. In 2023, at least 1,153 people were executed—a 30 percent jump from the year before. The true figure is almost certainly far larger. China, Vietnam, and North Korea do not release execution data, and Amnesty estimates thousands more died in those countries alone, their deaths absorbed into state secrecy.

Iran led the visible count with 853 executions, nearly three-quarters of all recorded cases globally. The number represented a 48 percent surge from 2022, driven largely by an intensified drug war that has become, in effect, a campaign of terror against the poor. Three men—Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi, and Saeed Yaghoubi—sent a clandestine message from an Iranian prison days before they were hanged in May 2023: "Do not let them kill us." They had been convicted under a charge of moharebeh, or enmity with God, accused of acquiring firearms and using them against civilians and police. Amnesty International says the convictions were unjust. At least 545 of Iran's executions that year violated international law, the organization found—people put to death for crimes like theft, espionage, and drug offenses that should never carry a capital sentence under global standards.

The surge in drug-related executions tells a story about who bears the weight of state punishment. Forty percent of all executions worldwide in 2023 involved drug crimes. In Iran alone, drug-related deaths jumped 89 percent from 2022. Beatriz Martos, who leads Amnesty's campaign against capital punishment, traces the pattern to the pandemic's aftermath: the economic collapse that followed COVID-19 deepened poverty and inequality, pushing more people toward small-scale drug dealing as survival. "Many find in drug trafficking the way to earn a living," she explained. The response from governments has been to kill them—a response that Martos calls contrary to international law, which reserves capital punishment for crimes of extreme gravity. At least five people were executed in Iran for offenses committed when they were under eighteen, another violation of international standards.

Beyond Iran, the landscape of execution remains concentrated. Saudi Arabia carried out 172 executions, Somalia at least 38, and the United States 24. But the countries that execute most are also the ones most isolated. Only 16 nations now carry out capital punishment—the lowest number Amnesty has ever recorded. One hundred twelve countries have abolished it entirely. Another 32 retain it on the books but do not use it. Pakistan abolished capital punishment for drug offenses. Sri Lanka's president declared he would not sign execution orders. In sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya, Liberia, and Zimbabwe are advancing legislation to end it. Ghana's parliament voted for abolition, though the law had not yet passed by year's end.

Yet isolation has not stopped the killing. It has only made it more concentrated, more brutal. At the end of 2022, 27,687 people sat on death rows around the world, waiting. In 2023 alone, 2,428 new death sentences were imposed—a 20 percent increase. The conditions of death row constitute torture in themselves, Amnesty argues: the isolation, the dehumanization, the knowledge of what is coming. In Alabama, prisoners spend most of their days alone in individual cells, stripped of names, reduced to numbers. The state has begun using nitrogen gas asphyxiation. Kenneth Smith was subjected to this method in 2024, just fourteen months after a previous execution attempt on him failed.

Rocky Myers has been waiting on Alabama's death row since 1994, sentenced to death for a 1991 murder he may not have committed. He is Black, with an intellectual disability diagnosed when he was eleven. His judge imposed the death sentence despite the jury's recommendation of life imprisonment. His lawyer, Kacey Keeton, believes the system is broken in ways both visible and structural. "The United States has a long tradition of extrajudicial lynching of people of color," Keeton said during a visit to Madrid. "That capital punishment persists is simply a continuation of that system." She points out that no evidence supports the claim that executions deter crime. "If we are honest, it is only revenge." Alabama has 167 people on death row. The crime rate has not fallen.

The United Nations will examine capital punishment again at its General Assembly this year. Amnesty International will again call on all governments to end it—a vital demonstration, the organization argues, of commitment to human rights. But the trend is not yet clear. Fewer countries execute. More people wait to die.