https://www.fidh.org/en/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-an-irreversib...
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Today, 55 countries and territories still uphold and use the death penalty, and in 2022 an estimated 28,282 people around the world were known to be living under a sentence of death. An irrevocable sentence, the death penalty is discriminatory and waged disproportionately against people experiencing poverty, living with intellectual or psychological disabilities, members of religious, racial, or ethnic minority groups, and based on sexual orientation, religion, gender identity, and political opinion.
From the time of sentencing to the time of execution, various types of torture and other ill-treatment are utilised, including to force confessions for crimes punishable by death, and inevitably throughout the long and agonising waiting periods that pave the path to execution. What can only be amounted to as a form of psychological torture,“death row phenomenon,” refers to this excruciating waiting period often marred by degrading and inhuman conditions and treatment, isolation, and little to no human contact, all of which contribute to physical and psychological deterioration over long periods of time.
The act of execution itself, including methods such as decapitation, stoning, and lethal injection, is inherently incompatible with the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, often causing exceptional pain, not only to the victims of the execution but also to their families and loved ones. The pain of death penalty sentences reverberates throughout entire families and communities and can have damaging and lasting inter-generational consequences.
