People participate in a rally to mark the anniversaries of the historic 1972 Furman and 1976 Gregg Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 29, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Lebanon’s parliament on Tuesday (August 11, 2026) voted to abolish the death penalty, making it the first country in the Arab world to replace capital punishment with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour. The legislation will come into effect after it is signed by the President and published in the Official Gazette.
According to lawmaker Imad al-Hout, who supported the bill, the legislation reduces sentences for people facing the death penalty and life imprisonment to 17 “prison years”. In Lebanon, where a prison year is generally calculated as nine months, this amounts to 12 years and nine months of actual imprisonment.
Lebanon has maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004. However, courts have continued to hand down death sentences. At the end of 2025, 85 people were on death row, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Justice’s Directorate of Prisons.
Which countries still retain the death penalty?
According to the latest report by Amnesty International on death sentences and executions, nearly three-quarters of the world’s countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice as of December 2025. Some countries that have abolished capital punishment in practice have retained it in law but have not carried out executions for at least 10 years.
Some countries have abolished the death penalty only for “ordinary crimes”. This means capital punishment may still be permitted for exceptional offences, such as certain crimes under military law or offences committed in exceptional circumstances.
Executions continue to rise
Despite the global decline in the use of capital punishment, executions increased sharply in 2025. Amnesty International recorded at least 2,707 executions worldwide in 2025, up 78% from 1,518 in 2024.
The increase was driven largely by Iran, where Amnesty recorded at least 2,159 executions in 2025, more than double the 972 executions recorded in 2024.
Amnesty’s figures do not include the executions believed to have been carried out in China, which continues to classify data on executions as a state secret.
Published – August 13, 2026 04:36 pm IST
