The OSCE and the Death Penalty Robert Badinter The OSCE is holding its position as humanity marches towards the universal abolition of the death penalty. Twenty-five states across the world had abolished the death penalty in 1975 when the Helsinki Final Act was adopted. Of the CSCE’s 35 participants, 17 still retained it, in law or in fact. When the Charter of Paris was adopted in 1990, which institutionalized the Conference as a true international organization (the CSCE would become the OSCE in December 1994), seven of the 34 states (reunification between East and West Germany having occurred in the interim) had not abolished the death penalty. This figure rose considerably in 1992 with the arrival of 15 states from the former Soviet Union, none of which had abolished the death penalty, and some states from the former Yugoslavia. In 1992, 21 OSCE member states still retained the death penalty, the Czech Republic and Hungary having abolished it in the interim. Since then, this figure has fallen substantially, as only nine of the 56 member states still retain this sanction in their legislation, and only three resort to it in practice: Belarus, the United States, and Uzbekistan. This considerable progress is evidence of a general shift by the international community. In 2006, 125 of the 192 UN member states no longer resort to capital punishment. The Treaty of Rome, which established the International Criminal Court and which has been ratified by 40 of the 56 OSCE member states, rules out the death penalty even for the worst crimes against humanity. The abolitionist stance is now in the majority across the world; the expectation is that, one day, it will become universal, like human rights. The principle of abolition is rooted within these very same human rights. The first human right is the right to life and represents the limit of a state’s power, a limit that cannot be breached in a democracy. The justice system can take the freedom, fortune, and honour of a person who has broken the law, provided that it respects the safe Robert Badinter is a former French minister of justice, former president of the French constitutional council, and president of the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. During his term of office as minister of justice from 1981 to 1985, he was successful in promoting civil liberties in the French justice system, including the abolition of the death penalty, the abolition of the State Security Court and military courts in peacetime, as well as improving the rights of victims of crime.