GNV News, 12 August 2026

On August 11, the Lebanese Parliament approved at a plenary session the “Walid Slaiby Law”, a bill that abolishes the death penalty and replaces it with life imprisonment with hard labor. The law is expected to formally enter into force after approval and signature by the president and publication in the official gazette. This will make Lebanon the second country (*1) among member states of the League of Arab States to fully abolish the death penalty. In Lebanon, no executions have been carried out for 22 years since the last execution of three people in January 2004, and the country had been classified as “abolitionist in practice (ADF)” (*2). However, death sentences continued to be handed down during that time, and by the time of abolition there were 85 prisoners on death row with finalized sentences.

Behind this abolition lies many years of advocacy by civil society organizations that began in the 1980s. Activities continued while building relationships with members of parliament and receiving support from domestic and international networks in favor of abolition, and strong backlash arose both domestically and internationally at the time of the 2004 executions. Similar abolition bills were introduced in 2004, 2008, and 2012, but none were enacted. Building on these efforts, the Lebanese Association for Civil Rights (LACR) submitted the bill in October 2025, leading to its passage. The bill is named after the late Dr. Walid Slaiby, one of the people who launched the abolition movement in 1983.

This passage is also noteworthy because it occurred amid a period of national hardship, including a military invasion and occupation by the Israeli army, an increase in internally displaced people due to evacuation orders, and a severe economic crisis, and because it was realized in parallel with deliberations on a controversial general amnesty law (*3).

As for the death penalty system, while 145 countries worldwide are abolitionist either in law or in practice, 54 countries still retain the death penalty, and the number of executions in 2025 reached a record high. In addition, in Israel, new legislation has been advancing since 2026 that would in effect expand the application of the death penalty for terrorism-related offenses solely to Palestinians, highlighting a global divide in attitudes toward the death penalty.

*1 The first was Djibouti, which abolished the death penalty in 2024.

*2 Classification by the Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU) and the Death Penalty Project (DPP). See here.

*3 If the general amnesty law is passed, it is believed that, with some exceptions, it could lead to sentence reductions or even release for members of armed groups and drug traffickers who have been convicted, and it has become a source of controversy on a scale not seen in parliament since the end of the civil war in 1990, which lasted 15 years.

Learn more about the recent increase in executions → “Number of executions hits record high”

Learn more about the history of the death penalty system → “The death penalty worldwide”

Lebanese Parliament (Photo: Pjposullivan1 / Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0])