Which countries executed the most people in 2015?

Amnesty International reports that there was a dramatic 54 percent increase inexecutions globally in 2015.

The human rights organization said at least 1,634 people were executed last year -- up from 1,061 in 2014. It was the highest number of executions documented by the group in any year since 1989.

There is one country that stands well apart from the rest, and the next three on the list account for almost 90 percent of the documented total.

So which countries ended the most lives in the name of justice last year? Click the next button below to see the figures.

China

The figures reported by Amnesty International do not include executions in China, where data on the death penalty is considered a state secret.

Amnesty International's Secretary General Salil Shetty told several reporters on Tuesday that for China "our estimate is that they execute as much as the rest of the world."

He said China is currently reviewing crimes punishable by the death penalty so there is "a slim ray of hope" that the number of executions may be reduced.

In 2013, China executed four foreigners, following a live nationwide broadcast showing them being led to their deaths.

In 2011, a U.S. human rights group said that China executes about 4,000 people a year, the most in the world but half the number it did before ordering Supreme Court reviews of all death penalty cases in 2007.

Iran

Executions in Iran rose 31 percent to 977, according to Amnesty International.

Amnesty said it received information that both Iran and Pakistan executed people in 2015 who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed.

Earlier this year, the London-based group found that Iran has executed at least 73 juvenile offendersbetween 2005 and 2015, including at least four last year.

Most executions overall in Iran are carried out for drug smuggling. The country straddles a major narcotics trafficking route linking opium-producing fields in Afghanistan to Europe.

Pakistan

The 326 executions in Pakistan were the highest ever recorded by Amnesty International.

Amnesty said it received information that Pakistan, as well as Iran, executed people in 2015 who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed.

Pakistan's government lifted a six-year ban on the execution of civilians in December 2014, after Taliban militants raided a military-run school in Peshawar, killing 148 people, most of them children.

In September, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that authorities had hanged 236 people since lifting the 2008 moratorium on executions.

Saudi Arabia

According to the report, the number of executions recorded in Saudi Arabia increased by 76 percent to 158.

Amnesty has said that beheadings in Saudi Arabia reached their highest level in two decades last year, and there was a parallel rise in executions for non-lethal offenses that judges have wide discretion to rule on, particularly drug-related crimes.

Saudi Arabia's execution last year of a cleric from the country's Shiite Muslim minority, along with more than 50 other convicts, touched off a diplomatic crisis with Iran and other Shiite-dominated regimes in the Middle East.

The combined executions in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran represent almost 90 percent of the total documented last year of 1,634.

United States

In the United States, 28 people were executed in 2015, nearly half in Texas, the most active death penalty state, which put 13 people to death, the report said.

Missouri executed six people, Georgia five, Florida two and Oklahoma and Virginia one each. Amnesty said 60 percent of those executed were black or Hispanic, double their percentage in the population.

Amnesty also pointed out the governor of Pennsylvania establishing a moratorium on executions last year and the legislature in Nebraska overriding the governor's veto of a bill abolishing the death penalty.

The rights group said the U.S. was the only country to carry out executions in the entire Americas region for the seventh year in a row.

"Overall trend"

Amnesty International's Secretary General Salil Shetty said four countries abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2015 -- Republic of Congo, Fiji, Madagascar and Surinam -- bringing the global total of countries now banning executions to 102.

Other countries have also made progress: Mongolia is set to abolish the death penalty this year, China and Vietnam reduced the number of offenses that can be punished by death, and Malaysia announced legislative reforms to review the country's mandatory death penalty laws, Amnesty said.

In addition, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Kenya and South Korea considered legislation to abolish the death penalty, it said.

When Amnesty International began campaigning against the death penalty in 1977, only 16 countries had fully abolished the death penalty.

"The overall trend is very clear," Shetty said, "more than half the world's nations have abolished the death penalty."