12 The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area penalty, while also using the exceptional punishment of life imprisonment on rare occasions. The process of developing an approach to capital punishment in Belarus that is equivalent to the approaches of European countries shows that Belarus has developed its legislation and practices. It is sufficient to note that the issue of the death penalty was put to a nationwide referendum in November 1996, and the country periodically hosts international conferences and seminars on the topic, and constantly follows public opinion with the help of the mass media. Parliamentary hearings held in May 2002 on the death penalty, organized by the House of Representatives of the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament), represented a serious step forward on the road to resolving this question and also produced a series of recommendations. We should stress that the very fact that these hearings were held has led to increased interest on the part both of lawyers and the public in this issue, which continues to be actively discussed in print and other media. The consideration of the issue by Belarus’s Constitutional Court played a significant role in determining approaches to resolving this question. The case was initiated by the House of Representatives, which asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of those provisions of the Criminal Code that envisioned the use of the death penalty as a form of punishment. In its judgement of 11 March 2004, the Constitutional Court stressed the comparison of provisions of Belarus’s Constitution, international legal acts ratified by Belarus, and the rules of the Criminal Code. Article 24 of the Constitution, adopted on 15 March 1994, stipulates that: “Everyone shall have the right to life. The State shall protect the life of the individual against any illegal infringement. Until its abolition, the death penalty may be applied in accordance with the law as an exceptional form of punishment for very grave crimes and only according to a sentence of a court.” This rule of the Constitution enshrined, for the first time in Belarus, the nonderogable right to life of every human being and the obligation of the state to ensure protection of human life from any form of illegal infringement. With the aim of guaranteeing protection of the right to life, lawmakers permitted the application of the death penalty while at the same time indicating its exceptional and temporary nature. Thus, the Constitution establishes the possibility of applying the death penalty. And national criminal legislation cannot contravene the Constitution. It also cannot contravene international legal acts signed and ratified by Belarus, which, following from Article 8 of the Constitution, recognizes the primacy of universally acknowledged