Overview The worldwide trend towards the full abolition of the death penalty continued during the reporting period for this background paper, from 1 July 2009 to 30 June 2010. Several OSCE participating States have taken significant legal, judicial, political and de facto steps in this regard. Death sentences and execution rates declined in the United States, and the debate on the introduction of a moratorium has increased in intensity in Belarus, although executions continued to be carried out. In the Russian Federation, the Constitutional Court ruled out any possible reinstatement of the death penalty there when it prolonged the existing moratorium on the practice until when, in adherence to the country’s international obligations, a formal abolition of the death penalty is put in place. Two countries that had already fully abolished the death penalty in their domestic legislation also confirmed this at the international level during the reporting period. In Kyrgyzstan, the parliament adopted a law on accession to the Second Optional Protocol of the United Nations International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, which is aimed at the abolition of the death penalty. It was signed into law by the president in March 2010, but the formal accession is yet to take place. On 19 December 2009, Spain ratified the Council of Europe’s Protocol No. 13 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances. Nonetheless, two OSCE participating States – the United States and Belarus – continued to carry out executions during the reporting period, and Kazakhstan passed a law expanding the list of crimes for which the death penalty can be imposed as a sentence by one, from eight to nine. At the international level, on 3 July 2009, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly adopted the Vilnius Declaration, outlining a set of policy recommendations to the governments of the OSCE participating States.1 The Declaration, voted on by 213 parliamentarians from 50 OSCE countries, contained a resolution calling upon participating States who maintain the death penalty to declare an immediate moratorium 1   OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Resolution on a Moratorium on the Death Penalty and Towards Its Abolition, AS (09) D 1 E, Vilnius Declaration, Vilnius, 29 June – 3 July 2009. See Annex 1. vii