The US executes more people every year than Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan

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The UN has long pushed for global abolition of capital punishment. Since 2007, the General Assembly has approved four separate resolutions calling on member states to accept an international moratorium.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Global Post
By Timothy McGrath | December 10, 2013

The US executes more people every year than Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan.

Today is International Human Rights Day. So here in the United States, it’s worth revisiting a debate that nearly every other developed nation has already sorted out: Is it a human right NOT to be legally murdered by your own government?

The United Nations thinks so. In February, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Capital punishment is inconsistent with the mission of the United Nations to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person.”

The UN has long pushed for global abolition of capital punishment. Since 2007, the General Assembly has approved four separate resolutions calling on member states to accept an international moratorium. Of the 190-plus member states, about 150 have eliminated the death penalty or no longer practice it. Even Russia has a moratorium that’s been in effect since 1996.

And that leaves the rest — the countries that shoot, hang, lethally inject, and behead people as punishment for their alleged crimes.

Amnesty International documents capital punishment around the globe and publishes its findings in an annual report that ranks the world's states by the number of people they execute annually. The most recent report came out in April and covered the calendar year of 2012. We will have to wait a few months for the new report to tell us all about state murder in 2013. For now, here are the most up-to-date statistics on capital punishment across the globe.

In 2012, 21 countries executed people.

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