Foreword The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has 56 participating States, the large majority of which have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. The ODIHR has been tasked with providing up-to-date information on this issue at the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. Chapter 1 of this background paper lists the participating States and classifies them as abolitionist, partly abolitionist, de facto abolitionist, or retentionist. The participating States that retain the death penalty have committed themselves to making information on its use available to the public. With a view to assisting participating States’ compliance with this commitment, Chapters 2 and 4 provide a forum for the publication and dissemination of such information. Chapter 2 includes five essays on different approaches to the death penalty. When considering these essays, readers should keep two points in mind: the first is that no attempt was made to provide an exhaustive overview of the different approaches to the death penalty taken by all 56 participating States; the second point is that the opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their respective national governments, the OSCE at large, or the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. In the first essay, Robert Badinter, a former minister of justice of France and a prominent advocate for abolition, discusses developments in the use of the death penalty in the context of the OSCE. The following four essays, written by contributors from Belarus, Poland, Tajikistan, and the United States, describe national processes, experiences, and arguments that led the authors’ respective countries to their current position with regard to the death penalty. While there is no OSCE document obliging participating States to abolish capital punishment, it is the ODIHR’s intention to present a range of experiences of OSCE participating States with regard to capital punishment: states that have abolished it either de jure or de facto and states that continue to carry out executions.  This paper updates Background Paper 2005. The reporting period covered by this paper is from 30 June 2005 to 30 June 2006. Information on developments that have occurred since 30 June 2006 will be indicated as such. vii