Is the global trend toward abolishing the death penalty compatible with blasphemy-based capital offences? Critically analyse.

Today, 170 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, or have placed a moratorium on it [1]. Even so, a few states that keep it still allow death for blasphemy. Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court recently set aside a death sentence that had been given to a Sri Lankan engineer, Anojan Sivarasa, for a Facebook post [2]. The case shows that the two can exist side by side but cannot be reconciled in principle.

Why they are incompatible

• "Most serious crimes" test: Article 6 of the ICCPR has been ratified by 175 countries. It limits capital punishment to the "most serious crimes". OHCHR said part of the rise in executions in 2025 came from offences below this threshold [1]. A speech offence takes no life.
• Free expression: Anojan's comment was made during a heated online exchange [2]. Making words punishable by death has a strong chilling effect on speech.
• Discrimination against migrants: UN experts found that migrants are disproportionately sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia and called this "discriminatory treatment of non-nationals" [3].
• Irreversibility: Religious offences depend on subjective interpretation, and an execution cannot be undone if the court was wrong.

Why they still coexist

• Sovereignty and religious law: Retentionist states see blasphemy as a threat to a faith-based public order. Saudi Arabia is not a party to the ICCPR, so external standards carry little weight there.
• The rise is concentrated, not global: OHCHR traces the 2025 surge to a small number of retentionist states [1]. Saudi Arabia executed at least 356 people that year, a record, and 78% of those executions were for drug offences [1]. Abolition and blasphemy laws diverge geographically rather than meeting.
• Relief comes within the system, not against it: Sri Lanka sent a President's Counsel to Riyadh and won a set-aside [2]. However, the case was remanded and a fresh sentence is "likely" [2]. Anojan was helped, but the law still stands.

Way forward

• Two tracks: use quiet legal diplomacy to save individuals, and use the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review to challenge the law itself.
• India's gap: India has prisoner-transfer treaties with 35 countries, but they exclude death-row prisoners [4]. Sending senior counsel to argue such cases, as Sri Lanka did, would fill part of that gap.

In principle, blasphemy-based capital offences are incompatible with the abolitionist trend. They survive only because of sovereignty and a shrinking group of retentionist states. Steadily moving these states toward the "most serious crimes" standard would bring them closer to SDG 16's goal of just institutions. It would also match the proportionality behind India's own "rarest of rare" doctrine.