Thailand will be one step closer to becoming a country that is no longer considered to have capital punishment next year, according to a definition which adopts a 10-year period for declaring a country execution-free in practice, says Amnesty International Thailand.
The group said it was pleased this criteria will likely be met, but added the country should go the whole way and revoke the death penalty entirely.
Amnesty International has recently released its 2017 global review of the death penalty, which shows its declining use in many regions around the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, including Thailand where there has been no execution since 2009.
Piyanut Kotsan, director of Amnesty International Thailand, said although Thailand will have no death penalty in practice, according to the United Nations definition, it remains among 56 countries which retain the sentence.
Last year, Thai courts ordered 75 executions, a decrease from 216 cases in 2016.
"We're close to becoming a country that is free of executions in practice as recognised by the United Nation. If we can successfully do it, it will be significant to the country's human rights development," she said.
According to the Department of Corrections, as of December 2017, there were 502 prisoners in Thai jails who have been sentenced to death.
Ms Piyanut said that the country could go further by officially suspending the death sentence together with commuting the sentences of those who have received the death penalty but have yet to be executed.
Moreover, she said the country should ratify the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is a binding international agreement to abolish the death penalty.
Amnesty International is committed to the unilateral abolishment of the death penalty on the grounds of human rights and humanitarianism, while there has been no correlation found between the use, or abolition, of capital punishment and crime rates, she said.
According to the Amnesty International report, there were least 993 executions in 23 countries in 2017, down by 4% from 2016 (1,032 executions) and 39% from 2015 (when the organisation reported 1,634 executions, the highest number since 1989).
At least 2,591 death sentences in 53 countries were recorded in 2017, a significant decrease from the record-high of 3,117 recorded in 2016.
Indonesia, which executed four people convicted of drug crimes in 2016, did not carry out any executions last year and reported a slight decrease in the number of death sentences imposed, the group's report said.