Lebanon’s parliament voted on August 11, 2026 to abolish the death penalty, making it the first country in the Arab world to formally end capital punishment. The legislation replaces all death sentences with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour, closing a legal contradiction that had persisted for over two decades. With this vote, Lebanon becomes only the second member of the Arab League, after Djibouti, to remove the death penalty from its legal books entirely.
The Legislative Journey: From Draft to Passage
The abolition was not a sudden decision. It was the result of a decade-long civil society campaign led primarily by the Lebanese Association for Civil Rights (LACR), the National Campaign for the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Lebanon, and the Association Justice and Mercy (AJEM). The LACR had been working on this cause since the 1980s, and the final bill was named the Walid Slaibi Law after the late co-founder of Lebanon’s abolitionist movement.
The draft law, formally designated Bill 160/2025, was submitted to the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee on October 7, 2025 by seven parliamentarians from different political blocs. Among the key sponsors were independent MP Paula Yaacoubian and Elias Hankach of the Kataeb party. The bill sought to abolish the death penalty “wherever it appears” in Lebanese law, including the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The legislative process moved through several stages. The cabinet issued a favourable advisory on November 20, 2025. The Parliamentary Human Rights Committee approved the draft on February 23, 2026, followed by the Parliamentary Justice Committee on June 2, 2026. The Joint Committee gave its clearance on July 9, 2026, before the full session of parliament took up the matter on August 11, 2026.
The vote passed with a majority of the 128-member assembly. Justice Minister Adel Nassar, who was present in parliament, called it a “historic step” for the country.
What the New Law Changes
The new legislation amends Article 37 of the Penal Code to replace the death penalty with a newly created punishment: life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour. It also annuls Article 43 of the Penal Code and Articles 420 to 424 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which had set out the procedures for carrying out death sentences.
A critical provision of the law is its blanket nature. The draft stipulates that the death penalty is abolished “wherever it appears” in Lebanese laws. This is significant because the death penalty in Lebanon was not confined to a single statute. A total of 41 legislative provisions across various laws had provided for the application of capital punishment. The range of capital crimes had included murder, espionage, treason, terrorism, collaborating with enemy forces, and in especially heinous cases, rape, gang-robbery involving torture, arson, sabotage of communications or transportation infrastructure causing death, and certain military offences such as desertion.
Under the transitional provisions, all 85 people on death row as of the end of 2025, according to the Directorate of Prisons at the Ministry of Justice, will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour. Death sentences for crimes committed before the law’s implementation will also be commuted.
However, a key question remains unresolved. The legislation does not yet specify in detail how “aggravated hard labour” would be enforced. While hard labour is already written into Lebanese law, it has rarely been implemented in recent years due to the country’s severe financial crisis and overcrowded prisons.
A 22-Year Moratorium Comes to an End
Lebanon’s last executions took place on January 17, 2004, when three men convicted of murder were put to death. Those executions followed a five-year break since 1998 and triggered a significant backlash from civil society groups and the European Union. From that point onward, Lebanon maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions, though the death penalty remained firmly on the legal books.
During this moratorium, successive Ministers of Justice took the position that they would refuse to sign execution warrants. In the Lebanese system, carrying out an execution required a decree signed by the President, the Prime Minister, and the Justice Minister. No such decree had been signed since 2004.
Yet the moratorium was never legally binding. Courts continued to hand down death sentences. In January 2025, a Lebanese military court sentenced Mohamad Ayyad to death in absentia over the killing of an Irish peacekeeper during a shooting at a UNIFIL patrol in southern Lebanon in 2022. This created a persistent legal contradiction: the state could impose the death penalty but had no practical mechanism or political will to carry it out.
The 2026 law resolves this contradiction permanently. As Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, noted, the vote “transforms a precarious hiatus in executions into lasting legal protection upholding the right to life.”
Hezbollah’s Opposition
The vote was not unanimous. Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc walked out of the session in protest. Hezbollah’s opposition was substantive rather than purely procedural. The party argued that abolishing the death penalty while parliament was simultaneously debating a controversial general amnesty law could lead to reduced sentences for perpetrators of serious crimes. Hezbollah’s concern was that the two legislative tracks together could produce outcomes that weaken accountability.
The timing was indeed sensitive. Lebanon’s parliament was discussing what has been described as the largest general amnesty law since the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990. That amnesty could potentially reduce sentences or even release convicted militants and drug dealers. Hezbollah feared that death row inmates could effectively benefit twice, first through the commutation of their sentences under the abolition law and then through the amnesty.
Family members of Lebanese soldiers killed or attacked by Islamist militant groups had also expressed opposition, saying they had hoped to see the perpetrators executed rather than see their sentences reduced. Lebanon’s diverse religious institutions, where the death penalty is considered legal in some of their respective court systems, also did not immediately comment on the vote.
A Practical Win: The Extradition Factor
Beyond the moral and human rights dimensions, the abolition carries a significant practical benefit for Lebanon. Justice Minister Adel Nassar pointed out that the existence of the death penalty in Lebanese law had created a legal obstacle to securing the extradition of fugitives from countries that have abolished capital punishment.
Under international law, many abolitionist countries refuse to extradite suspects to nations where they could face the death penalty, citing the risk of irreversible punishment. Lebanon had faced this problem repeatedly. With the death penalty now formally removed from its legal framework, those countries will no longer be able to cite Lebanese law as grounds for refusing extradition requests.
This issue had come up in a high-profile context. Bulgaria had previously sought assurances from Lebanon that Igor Grechushkin, the owner of the vessel MV Rhosus that transported the ammonium nitrate that later exploded in the 2020 Beirut port disaster, would not face the death penalty if extradited and tried. While Justice Minister Nassar said there was “no link” between the abolition and the port explosion investigation, the broader extradition problem was a motivating factor behind the push for abolition.
Nassar explained that “countries that used to refuse to extradite suspects to Lebanon on the grounds that Lebanon applies the death penalty will no longer be able to use that argument.”
Where the Arab World Stands on the Death Penalty
Lebanon’s abolition is being described as a “first” for the Arab world, though some nuance is needed. Djibouti abolished the death penalty in 1995 and acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2002. However, Djibouti is located in the Horn of Africa and is often classified under Sub-Saharan Africa rather than the Middle East in geopolitical frameworks. Lebanon’s abolition is therefore widely regarded as the first in the Middle East and the first by a major Arab state in the region.
The distinction matters. The vast majority of Arab League’s 22 member states continue to retain capital punishment. Countries including Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Mauritania, the UAE, and Palestine all maintain the death penalty in their legal systems. Among these, some have maintained long-standing moratoriums or have not carried out executions for many years, but none had formally removed the punishment from their laws until Lebanon’s vote.
The contrast with recent regional trends is stark. In March 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a law expanding the use of the death penalty, a measure whose wording made clear it would primarily be applied to Palestinians. In June 2026, Jordan carried out its first executions since 2017, hanging six men. Amnesty International’s 2025 report recorded that 2,707 people were executed across 17 countries worldwide, the highest figure since 1981, driven largely by Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China.
Global Abolition Trend
Lebanon’s abolition fits into a broader global trend. As of 2026, 113 countries have fully abolished the death penalty in law, while 145 countries in total are abolitionist either in law or in practice. Over 70% of the world’s countries no longer execute prisoners, according to the ECPM (Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort). When Lebanon’s law takes effect, it will become the 114th country to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.
The trajectory has been consistent. When Amnesty International began its work against the death penalty in 1977, only 16 countries had abolished it. The number has grown steadily, with recent additions including Vietnam, which abolished the death penalty for eight offences including drug trafficking and bribery, and Gambia, which ended capital punishment for murder, treason, and other offences against the state.
However, the trend is not entirely one-directional. A small number of countries, notably China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, continue to carry out large numbers of executions. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted eight non-binding resolutions since 2007 calling for a global moratorium on executions, with Lebanon voting in favour in 2020, 2022, and 2024. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have urged Lebanon to go further by ratifying the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which would make its commitment to abolition irreversible under international law.
Key Takeaways
- Lebanon’s parliament voted on August 11, 2026 to abolish the death penalty, making it the first country in the Arab world to formally end capital punishment in law.
- The death penalty is replaced with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour under the new legislation.
- Lebanon’s last execution was carried out on January 17, 2004, and the country had maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions for 22 years before formal abolition.
- The bill, named the Walid Slaibi Law, was submitted by seven parliamentarians in October 2025 and amends the Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure.
- Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc walked out of the vote, opposing abolition while a general amnesty bill was being debated simultaneously.
- Lebanon becomes the 114th country worldwide to abolish the death penalty for all crimes, and only the second Arab League member, after Djibouti (1995), to do so.
