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     According to the most recent figures assembled by Amnesty International, more than half the countries in the world no longer use the death penalty. The international human rights organization, which opposes the death penalty, regularly gathers and publishes data on its status and use throughout the world. In February 1999, the division between abolitionist and retentionist countries was as follows:

67 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes;
14 countries have abolished it for all but exceptional crimes such as certain offenses committed during time of war;
23 countries can be considered to be abolitionist de facto, because although they retain the death penalty in law, they have not carried out executions for the past ten years or more;
91 countries retain and use the death penalty.

     During 1997, the last year for which figures are available, at least 2607 persons were executed in 40 countries and 4363 sentenced to death in 69 countries. These numbers include only the cases which can be verified by Amnesty International. The organization believes that the true figures would be higher.
     Four countries accounted for 85 per cent of all executions officially recorded by the organization: China (1876), Iran (143), Saudi Arabia (122), and the United States (74). The organization also received reports of hundreds of executions in Iraq but could not verify most of these reports.
     According to Amnesty International, the death penalty is rarely reinstated once it has been abolished. Since 1985, only four countries have reintroduced the death penalty and of those four, one—Nepal—later abolished it again.

Execution of Juveniles
     More than 100 countries have laws which specifically prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders or are parties to one or another of the international human rights treaties which prohibit the use of the death penalty against anyone who was under 18 years old at the time of the crime.
     From 1990 to 1998 six countries are known to have executed prisoners who were under 18 at the time of the offense: Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen. The United States executed the highest number of juvenile offenders during that period—10 since 1990, according to Amnesty International.

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Worldwide Abolition
     March 5th is International Death Penalty Abolition Day, a day that marks the occasion in 1847 when the state of Michigan became the first English-speaking territory in the world to abolish capital punishment. The death penalty is a violation of human rights. Abolition of the death penalty is an evolving standard of international law. Below you will find links to information on the status of the death penalty worldwide, abolition of the death penalty campaigns and learning materials to be used in classrooms or public education campaigns.
 
    International legal instruments take the form of a treaty that binds the contracting states to the negotiated terms. When negotiations are completed, the text of a treaty is established as authentic and definitive and is "signed" by the representatives of states. A state can agree to be bound to a treaty in various ways. The most common are ratification or accession. A new treaty is ratified by those states that have negotiated the instrument. A state that has not participated in the negotiations may, at a later stage, accede to the treaty. The treaty enters into force, or becomes valid, when a pre-determined number of states have ratified or acceded to the treaty.
     When a state ratifies or accedes to a treaty, that state may make reservations to one or more articles of the treaty, unless reservations are prohibited by the treaty. Reservations may normally be withdrawn at any time. In some countries, international treaties take precedence over national law; in others a specific law may be required to give a ratified international treaty the force of a national law. Practically all states that have ratified or acceded to an international treaty must issue decrees, change existing laws, or introduce new legislation in order for the treaty to be fully effective on the national territory.

     The binding treaties can be used to force governments to respect the treaty provisions that are relevant for the human right to life. The non-binding instruments, such as declarations and resolutions, can be used in relevant situations to embarrass governments by negative public exposure; governments who care about their international image may consequently adapt their policies.