The region consists of 53 countries and covers about 28 million km2 with a population of approximately 930 million. It spans Europe and parts of Central Asia and stretches from Greenland in the northwest to Russia in the east and Turkey in the south. There are significant socioeconomic inequalities. 

The area contains a diversity of cultures and languages. The most common first languages are Russian, German, French, Italian, English, Spanish, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, Dutch, Serbo–Croatian, and Turkish. 

Suicide is identified as one of the significant public health issues in the region by the World Health Organisation, with an age-standardised suicide rate in 2021 of 10.1 per 100,000 population. Across the region, there were approximately 117,000 deaths by suicide in 2021. Russia (17.9 per 100,000), Lithuania (20.2 per 100,000), Kazakhstan (18.1 per 100,000), Slovenia (14.0 per 10,000), and Belgium (13.9 per 100,000) are the countries with the highest suicide rates in the region. 

As of 2025, twenty-four of the 53 countries in the region have developed a strategic suicide prevention plan.   

The region’s Partnerships for Life team is co-coordinated by Professor Thomas Niederkrotenthaler in Austria and Professor Vita Postuvan in Slovenia. At the sub-regional level, the Western part of the region is led by Fabrice Jollant in France, the South is led by Vita Postuvan, and the East by Zrinka Laido.