The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area TAJIKISTAN A moratorium on executions and the handing down of death sentences has been in place in Tajikistan since 15 July 2004. During the reporting period, Tajikistan continued slowly moving towards the full abolition of capital punishment. On the occasion of the Warsaw portion of the OSCE Review Conference, on 5 October 2010, Jumakhon Davlatov, the Head of the Working Group on the Death Penalty, which was established by an April 2010 decision by the President of Tajikistan, stated that the country would abolish the death penalty in the very near future. Earlier in the year, on 18 May, Davlatov told an international conference in Dushanbe, entitled “Central Asia Without the Death Penalty”, that the measures taken by the Tajikistani government showed that the country would not revert to imposing the death penalty.17 The government maintains that the legal abolition of the death penalty in Tajikistan would require changes to the Constitution, an outcome the majority of government representatives view as unrealistic, pointing out that the introduction of such changes would have to be approved in a referendum. According to the International Commission Against the Death Penalty (ICDP), the government would prefer to eliminate the death penalty from the Criminal Code and/or ratify the second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.18 ICDP explains that, according to the government, the abolition of the death penalty has to be understood as a part of a broader reform, aiming at the creation of more humane conditions in the Tajikistani justice system as a whole.19 In order to assess public opinion ahead of a possible future referendum, ODIHR commissioned the Nota Bene Public Association to carry out a survey on attitudes towards the death penalty in late 2010. Of the 2,000 people surveyed, 61.2 percent spoke out against the use of capital punishment in the country. 17  “Tajikistan will not revert to practice of death penalty, says Tajik official”, Asia-Plus, 18 May 2011, <http://news.tj/ en/news/tajikistan-will-not-revert-practice-death-penalty-says-tajik-official>. 18  Conclusion by the ICDP Mission to Tajikistan, communicated in a letter from the Secretary-General of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty to the ODIHR Director, Ambassador Janez Lenarcic, on 18 June 2011. 19  Ibid. 6