Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Dominate Global Executions

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 11:07AM EST · Published Apr 6, 7:09AM EDT

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Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Dominate Global Executions — © Thinkstock

Global executions rose 54% in 2015 to 1,634, according to Amnesty International. Three countries, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, accounted for 89% of the deaths. The 2015 total was the highest since 1989. China is not on the list, but the organization believes it would be in first place, if the figures were available.

Some highlights from the study:

Despite the shocking rise in executions in Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the long-term global trend is towards abolition of the death penalty. When Amnesty International began campaigning for abolition in 1977, only 16 countries had fully abolished the death penalty. Today the majority of the world’s countries are fully abolitionist, and dozens more have not implemented death sentences for more than a decade, or have given clear indications that they are moving towards full abolition. The starkly opposing developments that mark 2015 underscore the extent to which the countries that use the death penalty are becoming the isolated minority

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Also:

At least 20,292 people were under sentence of death worldwide at the end of 2015

The U.S. continues to have a prominent place on that list:

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.