Kazakhstan has joined the ever-growing family of nations that abolished the death penalty, making permanent a nearly two-decade freeze on capital punishment in the authoritarian Central Asian country (article available here). The action was taken as a step “[t]o fulfill a fundamental right to life and human dignity,” according to the president.
Executions were paused in Kazakhstan from 2003 but courts continued to sentence people to death in exceptional circumstances, including for terrorism offenses.
More than two-thirds of the world’s countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. 142 nations had either abolished the death penalty under the country’s constitution or laws or had not carried out an execution in more than a decade. 56 nations, including the United States, retain capital punishment.