Amnesty International: 'Death Penalty Down by Four Percent'

Death penalty executions dropped by four percent around the world last year, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

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In 2017, 993 people around the globe were executed, with China putting the most people to death. For the ninth year in a row, the United States was the only country in the Americas to continue using the death penalty. It registered 23 executions.

In total, 23 countries applied the death penalty last year. There was a decrease in Belarus of 50 percent, Pakistan of 31 percent, and in Egypt of 20 percent.

At the same time, Iran lowered its capital punishment rate by 11 percent and Saudi Arabia by 5 percent. Iran decreased the number of people it has killed for drug crimes by 40 percent.

Mongolia and Guinea, meanwhile, eliminated capital punishment, bringing the total number of nations which have banned the practice to 106.

Twenty Sub-Saharan African countries have now outlawed capital punishment. Kenya, Burkina Faso, Gambia and Chad are all developing legislation that will follow suit.

"The advances in Sub-Saharan Africa have reinforced the region's position as a place of hope for the abolition of the most extreme, cruel, inhumane and degrading forms of the penalty,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's secretary general.

Chiara Sangiorgio, also of Amnesty International, says that across the globe there has been an important decrease in the number of people employed in the capital punishment process.

At the other end of the scale, Palestine registered an increase of capital punishments from three in 2016 to six; Singapur went up last year from four to eight, and Somalia put 24 citizens to death in 2017, up from 14 in 2016.

Sangiorgio stresses that Amnesty is not looking to "create impunity for crimes," but rather to demonstrate that the death penalty "doesn't work."

"Sure there needs to be justice, but it's been tested that the death penalty doesn't work, and conserving it we only perpetuate violence and the violation of human rights," Sangiorgio told EFE.

The methods used by various states to carry out capital punishment varied last year from decapitation and drowning to lethal injection and firing squad.