UK Government strategy for Global Abolition of the Death Penalty

This strategy sets out the UK's policy on the death penalty, and offers guidance to FCO overseas missions on how they can take forward our objectives. We have set out a number of priority countries according to our objectives, and encourage posts in these countries to proactively drive forward the death penalty agenda, in order to make progress towards our ultimate goal of global abolition. See below for the Executive summary, or read the full UK strategy for Global Abolition of the Death Penalty.

Why is abolition of the death penalty important?

Promoting human rights and democracy is a priority for the UK. We oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle. There is a growing international momentum towards abolition of the death penalty; in the past two decades we have seen a significant rise in the number of countries becoming abolitionist, and we are keen to see this trend continue.

Goals

Our goals are:

1. to further increase the number of abolitionist countries, or countries with a moratorium on the use of the death penalty
2. further restrictions on the use of the death penalty in retentionist countries and reductions in the numbers of executions
3. to ensure EU minimum standards are met in countries which retain the death penalty.

Channels of influence

We will work to achieve these objectives through three main channels- bilateral initiatives, the EU, and the UN. Bilaterally, we continue to work hard to lobby governments to establish moratoriums or abolish the death penalty, raise individual cases of British Nationals, use political dialogue and fund projects to further our objectives.

We will continue to raise cases of third country nationals through the EU, and work with the EU taskforce on the death penalty to lobby states and pursue common action in international fora, such as the UN.

In the UN General Assembly, we support activity to work towards a global moratorium on the death penalty and co-sponsor the cross-regional resolution “on the Moratorium on the use of the Death Penalty”, which will be tabled later this autumn. We will continue to work to ensure that an increasing number of countries sign up to the resolution each time it is tabled. Read the full UK strategy for Global Abolition of the Death Penalty.