EXECUTIVE SUMMARY There has never been a formal consensus within the OSCE concerning the abolition of capital punishment, and countries that apply the death penalty with stringent procedural safeguards and due process of law do not violate OSCE commitments. Relevant OSCE documents, in particular the 1990 Copenhagen Document, solely oblige participating States to keep the question of capital punishment under consideration, to co-operate on the subject within relevant organizations, to exchange information on the question of abolition of the death penalty, and to make available to the public information regarding the use of the death penalty. Furthermore, the Copenhagen Document refers to other international standards and instruments restricting or completely abolishing the death penalty, namely Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, and Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This report reviews the period from 1 January 1998 to 30 June 2001. Notwithstanding the rather weak OSCE commitments on abolition of capital punishment, the worldwide trend towards abolition has been reflected also within the borders of the OSCE region. During the period under review alone, nine participating States removed the death penalty completely from their legal codes, thus bringing the total number of abolitionist countries within the OSCE to 41. As of 30 June 2001, only 14 participating States (and four separatist, internationally unrecognized entities) retained capital punishment in their statute books. Many of them, however, have ruled out the death penalty for peacetime offences or have imposed official or unofficial moratoria on executions. Therefore, the number of participating States actually carrying out the death penalty was very low. The countries where executions were confirmed to have taken place in the period under review were Belarus, Kyrgyzstan1, the Russian Federation (Chechnya, while under control of a separatist regime), and the USA. Other participating States, namely Tajikistan, Turkmenistan2, and Uzbekistan, are believed to have carried out the death penalty but no confirmed information was available. Several governments, including the governments of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, regard information related to capital punishment as a state secret and refuse to disclose relevant material - a practice that is in clear contradiction of their commitment under paragraph 17.8 of the Copenhagen Document. 3

Select target paragraph3