"After cautious optimism between 2018 and 2020, HRI has been reporting a steady increase in known drug-related executions since 2021. This trend reached crisis levels in 2024. With 615 people confirmed to have been executed for drug offences, 2024 is the deadliest year on record since 2015. Known executions have risen by 32% from 2023, and by a staggering 1950% from 2020, the year with the lowest figure on record. Notably, the figure of 615 known executions does not include the hundreds – if not thousands – of drug-related executions carried out in China, North Korea and Vietnam, where state censorship prevents us from realistically documenting how many people have been killed for drug offences.
"Executions were confirmed or assumed to have taken place in six countries: China, Iran, North Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Iran is responsible for 79% of all known drug-related executions (485) and thus remains the world’s biggest executioner for drug offences, together with China. The highest increase in executions was recorded in Saudi Arabia, where 122 people were executed for drug offences. This is a 6000% surge from 2023 (when two people were executed for drug offences), and the highest figure ever recorded in the Kingdom, signalling a renewed commitment to this barbaric practice as a tool of drug control. A jump in executions also occurred in Singapore, where eight people were hanged for drug trafficking between August and November 2024 alone.
"This is an extremely small group of countries, responsible for an incommensurate number of executions. This signals an alarming determination to retain this inhumane punishment, despite its ineffectiveness and incompatibility with international law and standards.
"These figures also confirm that drug control has become a key driver of the imposition of capital punishment worldwide and an obstacle to global abolition of the death penalty. Around 40% of all known executions carried out in 2024 – almost one in two – were for drug offences. The same trend is mirrored at the domestic level: drug offences were responsible for the majority of known executions in Iran (52%) and Singapore (89%), and for the majority of death sentences confirmed in Indonesia, Iraq, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Available figures on death row populations paint a similar picture."
Giada Girelli, Marcela Jofré, and Ajeng Larasati. The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2024. Harm Reduction International. March 2025.
