Most countries around the world have **abolished** the death penalty; meaning they *used* to have it, but have banned it, with bans generally coming into force from the 1970s-1990s. These days even countries which do allow a death penalty rarely use it.
When people discuss the pros and cons of the death penalty today, they generally argue in absolutist terms, e.g.: the risk of executing innocents, that the state shouldn’t kill its own citizens, lifetime incarceration is worse than the release of death etc. But clearly historical societies felt the death penalty *was* appropriate. So what changed in the mid-to-late 20th century to make countries favour abolishment?
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World War 2 caused a lot of death all over the world. As a consequence, the United Nations were formed. They published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Among other things, these human rights state that every person has a right to life. Many democratic states, especially European ones that were formed during that time, took this as the foundation for their political system.
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