Lebanon's parliament voted Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, which would make it the first Middle Eastern country to formally end capital punishment. A majority of the 128-seat parliament backed the measure; Hezbollah's bloc voted against it. The bill now heads to the cabinet and then to President Joseph Aoun, whose government has already voiced support.
Lebanon hasn't executed anyone since January 2004, though courts have kept issuing death sentences, and rights groups estimate more than 78 people are currently on death row. The new law replaces capital punishment with life imprisonment and hard labor, a sentence already on the books but rarely enforced amid the country's financial crisis and overcrowded prisons, and the legislation doesn't yet specify how it would actually be carried out. The vote follows a nearly three-decade campaign by civil society groups, while the death penalty is expanding elsewhere in the region: Jordan resumed executions in June, Israel passed a law in May permitting capital punishment for October 7 attackers, and Iran has executed at least 56 people on national security charges since March.
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