Lebanon Votes to Abolish Death Penalty

Lebanon’s parliament has voted to remove the death penalty from law, in a step that would make the country the first in the Middle East to formally end capital punishment.

On Tuesday, a majority of lawmakers in the 128-seat assembly backed the proposal, according to the parliament’s vote. The Hezbollah bloc in parliament voted against the measure.

The legislation will now be considered by the cabinet before being sent to President Joseph Aoun for signature. The government has said it supports the change.

Parliamentary vote and legal process

The measure passed in a formal vote after years in which executions were effectively halted. Under Lebanon’s system, carrying out a death sentence requires a decree signed by the president, the prime minister and the justice minister.

No such decree has been issued since January 2004, when the last execution was carried out. Despite the de facto suspension, courts have continued to hand down death sentences.

Rights groups estimate that more than 78 people remain under death sentences.

Replacement sentence and enforcement gap

Under the new law, capital punishment will be replaced with life imprisonment with hard labour. The legislation, however, does not set out specific details for how the alternative sentence will be carried out.

Hard labour is already written into Lebanese law, but it has rarely been used in recent years. Lebanon’s financial crisis and overcrowded prisons have constrained the authorities’ capacity and resources.

Civil society organisations and lawyers have campaigned for the abolition of capital punishment for years, arguing that the death penalty should be removed from the legal framework.

Oragit Younan, co-founder of the Lebanese Association for Civil Rights, said Lebanon should continue to defend human rights even amid conflict, adding that violence should not be countered with violence.

Previous attempts and wider regional debate

Lebanon’s vote follows more than two decades of an informal moratorium on executions. Previous efforts to end capital punishment in parliament have failed, including a bill submitted in 2004 and a proposal put forward by the justice ministry in 2008.

The death penalty had previously been available for a range of serious offences under Lebanese law, including aggravated murder, certain terrorism-related crimes that result in death, treason, espionage, and offences against state security.

Lebanon’s decision comes as the use of capital punishment remains contested across the region.

In June, Jordan resumed executions, carrying out its first since 2017. In Israel, parliament has approved legislation that expands the circumstances in which the death penalty can be imposed. Israeli lawmakers passed the law in May, authorising death sentences and public trials for people involved in the Hamas-led attacks and mass hostage-taking in Israel in October 2023.

Elsewhere, the UN human rights chief said he was alarmed by a rise in executions in Iran, where capital punishment continues to be used to “instil fear among the population and suppress dissent”.

Volker Türk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, said earlier this month that at least 56 people had been executed on national security-related charges since 19 March. He said 27 of those cases were linked to January’s nationwide anti-government protests.

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14 August 2026