On August 11, Lebanon's 128-member parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, making the country the first in the Middle East to end the practice. Under the new decision, death sentences will be replaced with life imprisonment with hard labor.
Lebanon had maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since January 2004, but its courts continued to hand down numerous death sentences. As of late 2025, according to the Prisons Department of Lebanon's Ministry of Justice, 85 people were facing the death penalty.
Global death penalty landscape
According to the latest report by Amnesty International on sentences and executions, as of December, nearly three-quarters of the world's countries have abolished the death penalty either in law or in practice, meaning they have not carried out executions in the past decade.
Some countries have abolished the death penalty only for ordinary crimes, excluding special offenses such as military crimes or cases committed under exceptional circumstances.
Specifically, the global situation is as follows:
- Abolished for all crimes: 113 countries
- Abolished for ordinary crimes: 9 countries
- Abolished in practice: 23 countries
- Retain the death penalty: 54 countries
Amnesty International's report recorded 2,707 executions worldwide in 2025, a 78% increase from 1,518 in 2024. The organization attributes the sharp rise primarily to executions in Iran, which more than doubled from 972 in 2024 to at least 2,159 in 2025.
Amnesty's figures do not include the thousands of executions believed to have taken place in China. Executions were carried out in 17 countries, consistent with the historic low seen since 2018.
