Singapore: Independent rights experts urge immediate end to ‘unlawful use’ of death penalty

Independent UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts on Tuesday condemned the execution of at least 16 people in Singapore for drug-related offences this year and urged the country to end its “continued and unlawful use of capital punishment.”

According to the experts – who receive no salary for their work from any UN entity and are not employed by any organization – the Government’s mandatory death penalties and statutory presumptions under the Misuse of Drugs Act amount to “arbitrary deprivations of life” that “must stop.”

The UN has repeatedly called for Singapore to put an end to its use of capital punishment over the years, reiterating that the mandatory imposition of the death penalty constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life under international law.

“States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may impose it only for the ‘most serious crimes,’ understood as crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing,” the experts said. “Drug-related offences do not meet this threshold.”

They called the abolition of the death penalty everywhere “the ultimate objective under international human rights law.”

The overwhelming share of executions in Singapore are for drug trafficking and related criminal convictions. In 2025, they comprised 15 of 17 executions.

Under Singapore’s 1973 Misuse of Drugs Act, trafficking, importing or exporting specific threshold quantities of prohibited substances carries a mandatory death penalty.

The law was amended in 2013 to give judges discretion to allow life imprisonment instead of death in very limited circumstances.

Independent rights experts have long deplored the mandatory nature of the death sentences, which means that judges generally cannot assess each defendant individually.

On Tuesday, they also criticised the law’s shifting of the burden of proof to the accused, which they said undermines the presumption of innocence and presents “grave consequences when a person’s life is at stake.”