it is the government who negoGates the amount to pay in ‘blood-money’ to the vicGm’s family. Mapping Foreign Nationals on Death Row in the UAE The Death Penalty Research Unit at the University of Oxford has engaged in a ‘mapping’ project, in which we have recorded the prevalence and experiences of foreign nationals under sentence of death or executed in the Middle East and Asia over the six-year period from January 2016 to December 2021, a sufficiently long period to chart trends but also to reveal contemporary practices. We have gathered information on 1,240 individual cases, which include 626 cases from the Gulf region. Owing to the closed status of most of these jurisdictions, we gathered our material from our project partner organisations, including Eleos Justice, Harm Reduction International (HRI), Project 39A, The Death Penalty Project and Reprieve, as well as others working on the ground including journalists and activists. We believe that through these methods we have data on the vast majority, if not all cases. We also turned to the ‘grey’ literature including non-governmental organisation (NGO) reports and media articles—both from the Middle East and across South Asia (from where many of the foreign nationals originated). Cases were collated, cross-referenced to omit duplications, anonymised and recorded on our database. According to our data, there were 156 foreign nationals under sentence of death during this period in the UAE. In terms of gender: there were 146 cases involving male defendants and 10 cases involving female defendants. With regards to the offence: 112 foreign nationals were facing the death penalty for homicide (72% of all foreign nationals under sentence of death or executed in the UAE during this period). Some 80% of those convicted for homicide offences were individuals from South Asia. Most of those foreign nationals are male (94%) and, while the reporting on this was inconsistent, most victims were other foreign nationals. In terms of foreign nationals sentenced to death for other crimes in the UAE, 31 foreign nationals were sentenced to death for drug trafficking, from the following countries (in order of highest number): Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Smaller numbers (less than 10 cases per category) of foreign nationals were sentenced for other crimes such as child rape, robbery, adultery, terrorism and kidnapping. Notably, 88% of the total populaGon of the UAE are foreign naGonals, many of them working in law-paid service and construcGon jobs on temporary contracts1. This high proporGon of foreign naGonals translates to the death row populaGon: of the esGmated 200 people on death row in the UAE (latest figures from 2018), only 19 are EmiraG (Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, 2018). Furthermore, eight of the nine women on death row are foreign naGonals (Cornell, 2018). And of the esGmated 91% of death row inmates that are foreign naGonals, more than 70% are from South Asia, despite the fact that they make up only 59% of the populaGon. Data collected by NGOs Reprieve and Migrant Care (2021) show that just under a third of death sentences in the UAE are imposed for drug-related offences; all of those convicted for drug-related offences since 1998 were foreign naGonals, most from Pakistan (despite 1 Migrants-Refugees Country Profiles, https://migrants-refugees.va/about/country-profiles/.