The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2019 constitute cruel and inhuman treatment within the meaning of Article 7 of the Covenant.”16 In last year’s General Comment No. 36, the Committee stated that: “Although the allusion to the conditions for application of the death penalty in Article 6, paragraph 2 suggests that when drafting the Covenant the States parties did not universally regard the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment per se, subsequent agreements by the States parties or subsequent practice establishing such agreements, may ultimately lead to the conclusion that the death penalty is contrary to Article 7 of the Covenant under all circumstances. The increasing number of States parties to the Second Optional Protocol, as well as by other international instruments prohibiting the imposition or carrying out of the death penalty, and the growing number of non-abolitionist States that have nonetheless introduced a de facto moratorium on the exercise of the death penalty, suggest that considerable progress may have been made towards establishing an agreement among the States parties to consider the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman or degrading form of punishment.”17 Various Special Rapporteurs on torture have highlighted the apparent contradiction between the prohibition of corporal punishment (even comparatively “lenient” forms) by international human rights law, and the fact that executions by methods such as hanging, electric chair, or firing squad are still regarded as permissible.18 Juan E. Mendez argued that the way out of this contradiction is an “evolving standard”, drawing upon the thinking of the European Court of Human Rights in the Selmouni case that the definition of torture had to evolve with a democratic society’s understanding of the term.19 Apropos, it is worth highlighting the 2002 opinion of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in which it recalled that, in its most recent resolutions, it had “reaffirmed its beliefs that the application of the death penalty constitutes inhuman and degrading punishment and a violation of the 16  Chitat Ng v. Canada, Communication No. 469/1991, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/49/D/469/1991 (1994) para.16.2 17  General Comment No. 36, op. cit., note 10, para. 51. 18  See Manfred Nowak, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” U.N. Doc. A/HRC/10/44 and Corr.1, para. 38; Juan Mendez, op. cit, note 15, para. 54. 19  European Court of Human Rights, Judgement of 28 July 1999 in Selmouni v. France, Application No. 25803/94, para. 101. 10