2023 was another extraordinary year for Reprieve. Our work is complex, challenging, and can take many years to bear fruit. However, with your support we have made huge strides in our efforts to end the death penalty and seek justice for victims of appalling human rights abuses carried out in the name of “counterterrorism” or “national security”.
We were absolutely delighted that 2023 saw the official completion of our award-winning resentencing project in Malawi. We started this project, along with a coalition of partners, in 2014, and since then we have secured
freedom for 163 people from death row – men and women who are now free to rebuild their lives. At the end of 2023 the final nine people who had received a mandatory death sentence received a new sentence in court,
with seven cleared for immediate release and the other two receiving a term of years. That judgment concluded a decade of work. Everyone who had received the mandatory death penalty has been resentenced without a single death sentence being handed down. Building on our resentencing successes, Reprieve’s fellows and partners in Malawi are at the forefront of a country-wide campaign to abolish the death penalty, and abolition is now within sight.
We are pleased that the Malawi Resentencing Project’s legacy continues in other parts of the world. In 2023, Malaysia abolished the mandatory death penalty for all offences. Building on our successes in Malawi, we launched a new project to secure justice for the estimated 900 people sentenced to death in Malaysia. Alongside our partners, we are doing everything we can to ensure their access to justice and the best chance of receiving a lesser sentence.
In 2023 we further strengthened our work protecting human rights in Saudi Arabia. Despite the reformist agenda promoted by the Saudi Crown Prince, Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the most prolific executing states globally, and one of very few states retaining the death penalty for child defendants. Reprieve is one of the few NGOs challenging the use of the death penalty in the Kingdom, together with our partner, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR).
In February 2023, we published a landmark report on the application of the death penalty in the Kingdom. The report comprehensively analyses over a decade of death penalty data (1,243 executions carried out between 2010 – 2021) and is the first detailed, data driven study on the use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia. The findings – which were covered extensively in the world’s media – are alarming, showing an 82% annual increase in executions since the Crown Prince came to power.
We also continued our vital work to prevent the executions of child defendants in Saudi Arabia. In 2023, we took on two new urgent cases – Abdullah al-Derazi and Youssef al-Manasif. Both were arrested and sentenced
to death for alleged non-lethal, protest-related offences dating to when they were children. Following their arrests, they were held incommunicado, denied access to lawyers, and brutally tortured into signing “confessions”. We and our partners continue to fight for Abdullah and Youssef, and to end executions of child defendants in the Kingdom and hold the Saudi regime to account for its human rights abuses.
Turning to our work on abuses in counter-terrorism practices, Reprieve continued our fight to secure the repatriation of families who are unlawfully detained in camps and prisons in North East Syria. The people detained there – a majority of whom are children – are suffering extreme human rights violations, and are at risk of torture, disappearance, and death. Over the past 12 months, Reprieve provided direct support to nearly 100 people from 10 different countries. We campaigned and advocated on behalf of our clients, jointly with their families – including by supporting the work of the Bring British Families Home group, a collective of affected British families we helped establish in 2020. At the end of 2023 we were delighted that six of our British clients were repatriated back to the UK. Reprieve is supporting
them to rebuild their lives.
On the financial side, we have responded to the challenges of the current economic climate by prioritising further diversification of our income, recognising that people are having to make tough decisions about charitable giving. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who chose to make a gift to Reprieve last year. We are dependent on charitable donations and it means the world to us that you have chosen to support our work, especially with so many other competing demands. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. None of this work would have been possible without you and your generosity.
Finally, we are truly privileged to work alongside an incredible team of staff, partners, lawyers, campaigners and investigators around the world. Together, we are achieving meaningful change for our clients, and effectively challenging the wider systems that enabled the abuses they face. Thank you for your support.
Anna Yearley OBE and Maya Foa
Joint Executive Directors
