Lebanon Abolishes Death Penalty: Where Does Capital Punishment Still Exist?

Lebanon's Parliament has approved a law abolishing the death penalty for all crimes, moving the country closer to ending capital punishment after more than two decades without an execution.

The law, approved by Parliament on Tuesday, replaces the death penalty with life imprisonment with hard labour. It will come into force after being signed by the President and published in the Official Gazette.

Lebanon's Parliament had been working on the legislation for months. Its Human Rights Committee examined the proposal in February, while the Justice Committee and Joint Committee subsequently approved it before the full Parliament passed it.

The move ends a de facto moratorium that had lasted for more than two decades. Lebanon last carried out an execution on January 17, 2004. As of the end of January 2026, 85 people remained on death row.

Why Lebanon Abolished It

The Lebanese Parliament's Joint Committees approved the abolition proposal in July. Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab said the legislation had undergone extensive discussion and that the death penalty had been a major obstacle in Lebanon's relations with the international community and human rights organisations.

The final law replaces capital punishment with "life imprisonment with hard labour", according to the Parliament's statement.

Amnesty International welcomed the vote, calling it a "major milestone and a victory for human rights". It said the decision transformed Lebanon's long moratorium into legal protection for the right to life, while urging the country to commute existing death sentences and ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Where Death Penalty Still Exists

Amnesty International's April 2025 global classification, based on the position of countries, identified 54 countries as retentionist, meaning their laws still permit the death penalty for ordinary crimes.

They include China, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, North Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam, among others.

Not all countries that retain capital punishment carry out executions. Amnesty classified 23 countries as abolitionist in practice, meaning they had not executed anyone for at least 10 years and were considered to have an established policy or practice of not carrying out executions.

Another nine countries retain the death penalty only for exceptional crimes, such as certain offences under military law. They include Brazil, Chile, Israel, Peru and Zimbabwe.

A Global Shift

Lebanon's legislation is expected to take effect after formal promulgation which would make it the 114th country to abolish the death penalty for all crimes. Overall, the organisation classifies 145 countries as abolitionist in law or practice, compared with 54 retentionist states.

Amnesty's historical data shows that abolition has accelerated over the past several decades. More than one country a year, on average, abolished the death penalty in law or extended an existing abolition to cover all crimes during the previous decade covered by its index. Lebanon's move therefore represents a significant change in a country that had retained capital punishment in law even while maintaining a moratorium on executions since 2004.