The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area event, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez, highlighted that regional and international jurisprudence and state practice increasingly consider the death penalty to amount to inhuman and degrading treatment or torture, specifically referring to the death row phenomenon and methods of execution.14 He further stressed that international law already expressly considers the death penalty to be a violation per se of the prohibition of torture or ill-treatment when carried out against juveniles, persons with mental disabilities, pregnant women, elderly persons and persons sentenced after an unfair trial. The Special Rapporteur stated that the evolving understanding of the prohibition of torture may render the death penalty illegal under international law and noted, in this context, that international conventions were living instruments that needed to be read in light of present-day conditions. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA), through its resolutions adopted at the 22nd annual OSCE PA session held in Istanbul from 29 June to 3 July 2013, and at its 23rd annual session in Baku from 28 June to 2 July 2014, has called on the two OSCE participating States that still retain the death penalty in practice, Belarus and the United States of America, to adopt a moratorium on all executions, followed by the complete abolition of the death penalty. The OSCE PA also expressed its concern about informal extraditions of foreign citizens to countries where they are at risk of the death penalty.15 The question of capital punishment also featured in other international fora involving OSCE participating States. On 11 September 2013 in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council held a panel discussion on the human rights of children of parents sentenced to the death penalty or executed.16 The Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children, Marta Santos Pais, noted in her statement that children affected by the death sentence or execution of their parents have not been included in statistics, policies and programmes. At the same time, such children are often traumatized and stigmatized and face a “heightened risk of homelessness and exposure to violence and to being manipulated into a 14 “Human Dimension: Side event on combating torture and abolishing the death penalty”, 11 April 2014, the Permanent Delegation of Norway to the OSCE; the video statement of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez is available at: <http://www.norway-osce.org/ Latest-news/Human-dimension-side-event-torture-death-penalty/#.U_CiyfmSzHU>. 15  Istanbul Declaration and Resolutions adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly at the twenty-second annual session, AS (13) DE, Istanbul, 29 June – 3 July 2013, <http://www.oscepa.org/publications/declarations/2013istanbul-declaration/1826-istanbul-declaration-eng/file>; and Baku Declaration and Resolutions adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly at the twenty-third annual session, AS (14) DE, Baku, 28 June – 2 July 2014, <http://www. oscepa.org/publications/all-documents/annual-sessions/2014-baku/declaration-2/2540-2014-baku-declaration-eng/ file>. 16  “Summary of the panel discussion on the human rights of children of parents sentenced to the death penalty or executed”, Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, A/HRC/25/33, 18 December 2013. 8