The Death
Penalty For
Drug Offences:
The Impact on
Women
Briefing Paper | March 2019
Authors:
Lucy Harry (DPhil student, University of Oxford),
Giada Girelli (Human Rights Analyst, Human Reduction International)
Although often overlooked, women are significantly affected by the death penalty for drug offences. Cornell Law School’s recent
publication, Judged for More Than Her Crime, on women sentenced to death worldwide, highlighted that drug offences are the second
most common crime for which women are sentenced to death, after murder, especially in the Middle East and Asia.i
This is especially the case for the most marginalised women, who may resort to working as drug couriers as a consequence of the
multiple, intersecting forms of gendered vulnerability they face. Whilst not all women engage in the drug trade due to exploitation, and
some do so through their own volition, it is important to highlight the most desperate situations.
Harm Reduction International’s report The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2018 found that:
At the end of 2018, there were four women on death row for drug offences in Indonesia;
Since 2008, six women have been sentenced to death in Sri Lanka for drug offences;
76 out of the 83 women on death row in Thailand are sentenced for drug offences;
A significant proportion of the 143 women on death row in Malaysia have been convicted for drug trafficking.
Jennifer Fleetwood and Lizzie Seal identified that many of the women who have been sentenced to death for drug offences are ‘mules’,
from foreign countries, with low socio-economic status and from ethnic minority backgrounds.ii These women operate at the lowest level
of the drug trade, yet receive the harshest punishment.
Significantly, the Penang Institute in Malaysia found that women convicted of drug trafficking have a significantly lower chance than their
male counterparts of having their cases reviewed and overruled, suggesting possible gender-bias in capital appeals.iii
A 2013 public opinion survey in Malaysia found that support for the death penalty drastically reduced from 74-80% to 9% when
respondents were presented with the case of a female drug courier.iv
PROVIDING FOR AND PROTECTING DEPENDENTS
In many instances, women engage in the drug trade in order to provide for or protect their family and/or dependents. Jennifer
Fleetwood, in her work on women sentenced for drug offences in Ecuador, refers to the concept of ‘provisioning’, to portray how women
may work as drug couriers in order to ‘meet the demands of parenthood’.v
By way of example, at least 43 women were hanged for drug offences in Iran between 2001 and 2017, including the executions in 2001
of Hourieh Sabahi, Leila Hayati and Roghieh Khalaji, who were single mothers, from low socio-economic backgrounds.vi Additionally, the
British national, Lindsay Sandiford, who is on death row in Indonesia for smuggling cocaine, alleges that she was forced to do so by a
drugs syndicate that threatened to harm her son.vii