30 The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area the 1860s. The first country to ban the death penalty was Venezuela, which introduced this rule into its legislation in 1863. Similar regulations were introduced into the legislation of Romania in 1864, Portugal in 1867, the Netherlands in 1870, and Italy in 1890. Switzerland abolished the death penalty at the constitutional level in 1874.19 Two World Wars, which accounted for the deaths of millions, provided further impetus for a world movement concerned with guaranteeing human rights, which resulted in reinforcing the aspiration of the peoples of the world to abolish the death penalty. By the middle of the 20th century, a number of universal international-law instruments had already been adopted, which, based on historical traditions,20 proclaimed the individual’s right to life, freedom, and personal inviolability.21 On 4 November 1950, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was adopted, which enshrines that, “Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law.” While still allowing application of the death penalty, Article 2 of the Convention clearly defines the framework associated with implementation of a death sentence: “No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.” A new phase in international co-operation on the death penalty was heralded by the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966. Although the Covenant does not include a provision envisioning abolition of the death penalty, it does stipulate in Article 2 that, “in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant... .” Thus, two new obligations were established for states parties to the Covenant: “sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time the crime is perpetrated and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant.” The international instrument that abolished the death penalty once and for all is Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning the abolition of the death penalty of 28 April 1983. Article 1 of this Protocol 1 states: “The death penalty shall be abolished. No one 19 20 Ibid., p. 243. What is meant here are those historical acts that consolidated an individual’s right to life, in particular, the US Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776. 21 Vseobshchaya deklaratsiya prav cheloveka – Sbornik mezhdunarodnykh aktov po pravam cheloveka (Dushanbe, 2001), p. 46.