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

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.”

Drug offences drive executions

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.”

“Capital proceedings require the highest standards of fairness and due process,” they said. “No execution can be lawful where the death sentence results from proceedings that fail to meet these guarantees.”

Calls to end death penalty

The UN has long viewed the death penalty as a violation of fundamental human rights, specifically the right to life and the protection against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Some 170 states have abolished or introduced a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, according to the UN’s human rights office, OHCHR.

Singapore does not have an upper age limit after which people cannot be executed.

If it is unwilling to abolish capital punishment entirely, Singapore should implement such a limit to ensure equality and nondiscrimination in its use of the death penalty, the independent experts said.

“The extreme physical and psychological suffering inherent throughout the death penalty process, culminating in the deliberate taking of a person’s life by the State, cannot be reconciled with the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, nor with respect for human dignity,” they stressed.