Reprieve

EU Legislative Interests

Reprieve is actively engaged with the EU’s human rights policies and initiatives, with a particular focus on the EU’s policy against the death penalty, including the EU guidelines and minimum standards on the death penalty. Reprieve continues to assist the European Commission in its periodic reviews of EU Regulation 2019/125 (the “Torture Regulation”), including with a view to ensuring that exports from the EU (including pharmaceutical products) are not used for the purpose of carrying out executions, and have served on expert groups advising the Commission on various aspects of the regulation and its predecessors. Reprieve also engages with the European Parliament around human rights issues falling within our remit. For example, we work with Members of the European Parliament on resolutions relating to the death penalty, including to raise awareness of individuals at risk and to share best practices in relation to European nationals facing the death penalty overseas. Reprieve has advocated for a European position on the use of lethal drones to carry out extrajudicial killings, as well as stronger safeguards when it comes to the sharing of intelligence that may be used for lethal operations.

Communication Activities

In April 2024, Reprieve started a new two-year EU funded project, titled “FFPA: Global Consortium for Death Penalty Abolition”, as part of a wider consortium of organisations working towards global abolition. Reprieve is a Co-Lead of the consortium and Reprieve’s focus is on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. This is ongoing. In November, Reprieve met with the new EU Special Representative for Human Rights Kajsa Ollongren in Brussels, focusing on our MENA work but also discussing our work in SEA, African and our Unlawful Detentions work. We followed up in writing with briefings on our work. In late 2025/early 2026 we took part in NGO briefings with the EEAS on their human rights dialogues with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait. Throughout the year, we have briefed the EEAS MENA and death penalty team on our work via email and over several calls. In March 2025 and February 2026, we participated in EU Anti-Torture Regulation (ATR) informal expert group meetings. In June 2025, as part of that informal group of experts, we provided a written submission in response to a questionnaire from the European Commission for its review report on the implementation of the Regulation. In May 2025, we briefed the EEAS Human Rights Division and US & Canada desk on our work on execution methods in the US. Throughout the year, we also briefed the Human Rights Policy Officer at the EU Delegation in the US, on our US death penalty work and on the situation of former Guantanamo detainees.

Interests Represented

Does not represent commercial interests

Member Of

Reprieve is a member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and several other human rights networks such as ADPAN.

Organisation Members

Reprieve is not structured in a way where other organisations, networks or associations can be members of Reprieve. Legally our members are our trustees who are all natural persons and whose details are included on our website at https://reprieve.org/uk/our-team-and-partners/#trustees. We work with a number of partner organisations around the world, including Reprieve US, BIRD, ESOHR, and LBH Masyarakat.