On June 25, 2025, in Vietnam, a bill amending the Criminal Code to abolish the death penalty for eight offenses was passed by the National Assembly and took effect on July 1.

The crimes for which the death penalty was abolished this time include transport of drugs, embezzlement, and destruction of state facilities. The Vietnamese government says it decided which crimes would be subject to the abolition after carefully analyzing the nature and seriousness of the offenses and the scale of losses caused. The maximum penalty for these crimes will henceforth be life imprisonment, and those who had received death sentences for these crimes but had not yet been executed before the effective date will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. In explaining how the amendment came to be passed, Minister of Public Security Luong Tam Quang has noted that the current death penalty system has problems and does not align with socio-economic conditions or actual crime prevention.

Vietnam is known as one of the world’s leading executioners. The government has announced that 429 people were executed between 2013 and 2016, the third highest after Iran and China. However, apart from these figures, the number of executions is a state secret. The largest share of death sentences is for drug-related crimes; according to Amnesty International, they accounted for 121 of the 150 death sentences handed down in 2024. The effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring crime has long been questioned, and the government also mentioned this point when submitting the amendment.

Following the amendment, Amnesty International called it “a positive step,” but warned that it falls short of broader reforms.

Learn about the death penalty worldwide → “The Death Penalty Worldwide”

Learn about Vietnam’s social issues → “Vietnam’s Ethnic Minorities: Why Are They Socially Disadvantaged?”

Chi Hoa Prison in Ho Chi Minh City (Photo: Tokeisan (thảo luận) / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 3.0])