14 The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area provide an answer to this question, we must consider this article of the Constitution in the context of other constitutional rules. The Constitution proclaims Belarus to be a democratic state governed by the rule of law. The Preamble states that the people of Belarus recognize themselves to be subjects, with full rights, of the world community and that they confirm their adherence to values that are common to all mankind, that they wish to ensure civil concord, which is the unshakable foundation of democracy and of a state ruled by law. The main provisions of Chapter 1 of the Constitution, “Principles of the Constitutional System”, are in effect rules that define the nature and essence of the state, the outlines of state policy, and the fundamental grounds for enshrining and developing all other principles and rules of the Constitution, including those directly relating to guarantees of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which are declared to be the highest value and goal of the state. The Constitutional Court noted in its judgement of 11 March 2004 that human life is recognized as the highest good in civilized human society and that the right thereto is natural and inalienable and is a person’s right from the moment of birth. If a person is deprived of life, all other rights lose meaning. In light of this, the all-embracing nature of each person’s right to life – as universally recognized and enshrined in a number of international documents and rules of national legislation – is entirely obvious. This axiom is closely interconnected with the issue of the legality of depriving a person of his or her life, including by use of the death penalty as a form of criminal punishment. The third part of Article 24 of the Constitution says that, until its abolition, the death penalty may be applied in accordance with the law as an exceptional punishment for grave crimes and only according to a sentence of a court. On the one hand, this standard is a guarantee that a person’s life will be protected from any criminal infringement, which was to some extent based on the absence in legislation of the time of life imprisonment as a form of punishment. On the other hand, it is an expression of the state’s firm and consistent position vis-à-vis abolition of the death penalty. On this basis, the Constitutional Court noted in its judgement that this part of Article 24 of the Constitution, which anticipates the abolition of the death penalty and establishes a kind of transitional condition in which it can be temporarily applied as an exceptional measure only for extremely serious crimes, assumes that the state will reject the death penalty at some point in the future. It appears that the position of the Constitutional Court will be decisive in determining legal paths to the abolition of the death penalty in Belarus.