THERE was an alarming increase in the use of capital punishment across the world last year. At least 1,634 people were put to death by shooting, beheading, lethal injection or hanging according to figures from the human-rights organisation Amnesty International. This is a 50% increase on 2014 and is the highest number for 25 years, mainly due to a surge in three countries: Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, in which 90% of all executions took place. Actual figures are likely to be much greater. China is believed to execute thousands of people, but the numbers are kept a state secret.

International law requires that capital punishment be reserved for adults who commit the “most serious” crimes, such as murder. Several countries have introduced the death penalty for drugs and terrorist-related crimes. Of the 977 known executions in Iran last year, more than 80% were for drug crimes, and in Saudi Arabia—where executions in 2015 saw a 20 year high—it was around half. Pakistan carried out 326 executions following the reversal of a moratorium on the death penalty for civilians in December 2014 after the Peshawar school massacre. Unfair trials and the use of torture to extract confessions are common. Around 7,000 death-row prisoners in the country face the ultimate punishment, a third of the global total.

Yet despite these gloomy statistics, the broader global trend is positive. In America—one of only three developed countries alongside Japan and Singapore to practice the death penalty—the number of executions declined in 2015, as it did the previous year. And China, for its part, reduced the number of crimes punishable by death. Forty years ago only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty. Last year that number reached 102 (a worldwide majority for the first time) as four more nations joined the ranks of abolitionists. A further 40 nations, whilst retaining the punishment in law, have not meted it out in decades. It appears that aside from a few gruesome exceptions, use of the barbaric practice is waning globally. Perhaps the world’s most powerful nation should consider following suit.