Use of Capital Punishment By Country - Abolition Chronology

Abolition Chronology

The table below lists in chronological order the 97 independent states, that are either UN members or have UN observer status, that have completely abolished the death penalty. In the hundred years following the abolishion of capital punishment by Venezuela in 1863 only 10 more countries were able to maintain abolition – although more tried but failed to prevent re-instatement after an initial abolition. From the 1960s there has been a growing momentum towards abolition worldwide. In the 1960s 4 countries abolished (a record up to that time for any decade), in the 1970s a limited momentum was achieved when 10 countries abolished, the 1980s saw a further 9 countries abolish, but it was the fall of Communism in 1989 which turned the trickle into a torrent – no fewer than 34 countries abolished in the 1990s, the individual years 1990 and 1998 are especially notable because 8 and 7 countries respectively abolished in those single years. This momentum is continuing as a further 26 countries abolished in the first decade of this century. Since 1985 there have been only two years when no country has abolished the death penalty, 1988 & 2003.

Note: Where a country has abolished, re-instated, and abolished again (e.g. Philippines, Switzerland, Portugal) only the later abolition date is included. Countries who have abolished and since reinstated (e.g. Liberia) are not included. Non-independent territories are considered to be under the jurisdiction of their parent country – which leads to unexpectedly late abolition dates for the UK, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where Jersey (UK), the Cook Is (NZ), and the Netherlands Antilles, were the last territories of those states to abolish capital punishment, and all were rather later than the more well known abolitions on the respective mainlands. Defunct countries such as the GDR (East Germany), which abolished capital punishment in 1987 but was dissolved in 1990, are also not included. References are in the continental tables above and not repeated here.