Overview
- The 9th World Congress against the death penalty opened in Paris on Tuesday, June 30, drawing more than 1,500 participants from about 100 countries to discuss coordinated abolition tactics.
- French President Emmanuel Macron was scheduled to attend Tuesday afternoon, and France is hosting the congress with symbolic figures from the abolition movement on the program.
- Organizers and researchers say documented executions have increased recently and are concentrated in a handful of states, with Iran recording at least 1,639 executions in 2025 and ECPM naming China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as top executioners in 2024.
- Speakers at the congress are focusing on structural issues that sustain the death penalty, including racial and nationality-based discrimination, the role of magistrates and judicial chains, and the need to engage younger activists.
- Survivors’ testimonies about time on death row and France’s long abolition history frame the debate, and participants say the meeting could sharpen international pressure and coordinated legal and diplomatic campaigns against countries that use executions for repression.