I. Introduction OSCE participating States have made a number of commitments regarding the death penalty, including to consider the potential abolition of capital punishment, to exchange information toward that end and to make information on the use of the death penalty available to the public.1 Where the death penalty is still in use, participating States have agreed that it can be imposed only for the most serious crimes, and only in line with international commitments.2 In light of these commitments and its mandate, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) monitors trends and new developments regarding human rights standards and practices among OSCE participating States related to the death penalty. The findings are presented each year in the Background Paper on the Status of the Death Penalty in the OSCE Area. The background paper is based on the information provided by participating States, in the form of responses to ODIHR questionnaires. The information from their responses has been included in the present report, to the extent possible, and is supplemented with information from international and regional human rights bodies, non-governmental organizations and media reports. The annexes contain excerpts from international and regional documents relevant to the question of the death penalty in the OSCE region. The ODIHR 2018 death penalty questionnaire was sent out in May 2018 to all OSCE participating States. The reporting period for this background paper covers developments from 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018. Twenty-one OSCE participating States have provided information on the status of the death penalty in their respective countries in response to the 2018 ODIHR questionnaire.3 Throughout the background paper, an abolitionist state is defined as an OSCE participating State in which there is no death penalty, in law, for any crimes. Fifty-two 1  “Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the OSCE”, OSCE, 29 June 1990, Copenhagen, paras. 17.7 and 17.8, <http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/14304>. See also: “Concluding Document of the Third Follow-up Meeting, Vienna, 4 November 1986 to 19 January 1989”, OSCE, (hereafter, “Vienna Document 1989”); “Document of the Sixteenth Meeting of the Ministerial Council Helsinki 2008”, OSCE, (hereafter, “Helsinki Document 2008”).. 2  “Vienna Document 1989”, para. 24, op. cit., note 1. 3  The participating States of Albania, Andorra, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Republic of Uzbekistan replied to the 2018 ODIHR questionnaire on the death penalty. 5