LAHORE: Even though Pakistan carried out fewer executions in 2016, it sentenced nearly three times more people to death than the year before, Amnesty International stated on Tuesday.

According to the 2016 edition of Amnesty International`s worldwide report on the death penalty, Pakistan reduced the number of executions by 73pc as compared to the year before. `While we welcome this development, it is alarming that the number of recorded death sentences rose to over 360 as compared to the 121 death sentences in 2015,` the report said.

It said the scope of the death penalty could not be reduced by simply hanging fewer prisoners. This could only be done by actually carrying out genuine reform at the structural level of Pakistan`s criminal justice system.

This year alone, Pakistan would have to answer for its implementation of the death penalty before three United Nations treaty bodies as well as undergo its Universal Periodic Review, Amnesty International said. Starting with the Convention against Torture on April 18, the Pakistan government would have to account for its failure to complywith its international human rights obligations.

`Pakistan continues to retain one of the highest populated death rows in the world, primarily because the safeguards that should prevent death sentences from being imposed on juvenile offenders, mentally ill and disabled prisoners or those tortured into false confession are simply not adhered to.

Moreover, in Pakistan, death penalty is not an exceptional measure. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Pakistan in 2010, `sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes`. The UN Human Rights Committee maintains that the term `most serious crimes` must be read restrictively to mean that the death penalty should be an exceptional measure. And yet, there are 27 death-eligible crimes in Pakistani law, including non-lethal crimes like apostasy, adultery and railway sabotage.

Together with Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan carried out 87pc of the global total of 1,032 executions worldwide.