On March 30, 2010 Amnesty International published their annual report “Death Sentence and Executions 2009”. The report covers worldwide development of the death penalty including countries that carried out executions, new death sentences, and the movement toward abolishment of the practice.
The report details the 18 countries in which executions took place in 2009. The following is the list of countries that carried out executions and the estimated number of legally killed individuals:
Bangladesh (3), Botswana (1), China (in excess of 500), Egypt (5+), Iran (388+), Iraq (120+), Japan (7), Libya (4+), Malaysia (68+), North Korea (more than 1; figure unknown), Saudi Arabia (69+), Singapore (1), Sudan (9+), Syria (8+), Thailand (2), United States of America (52), Viet Nam (9+), Yemen (30+).
As Amnesty International works to end use of the death penalty, there were a total of 2001 official new death sentences issued in 2009 in 56 countries, the largest numbers reportedly coming from Afghanistan (133+), Algeria (100+), Egypt (269+), Iraq (366+), Pakistan (276), Sri Lanka (108), and the United States (105+) with unknown figures from high sentencing regions like Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea, and China.
Amnesty International, which has supported worldwide abolition since 1977. proudly cited a number of exciting developments in the move toward universal abolishment of the death penalty. For the first time since the organization began maintaining records, not a single execution took place in Europe. Additionally, there were no reported executions in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Belarus, Indonesia, Mongolia, Pakistan, St. Kitts and Nevis, and United Arab Emirates in 2009.
Greater still, two nations, Burundi and Togo, abolished the death penalty in 2009 bringing the world total of countries to have removed capital punishment from law to 95. Worldwide, 139 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice with only 58 countries continuing to retain the punishment in their legislation.
The report details regional developments and includes a variety of maps all of which can be viewed here.