The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2021 international and regional human rights bodies, non-governmental organizations and media reports. This year’s background paper, which covers developments from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, contains an introductory essay by Jeanne Bishop, and has a thematic focus on how a selection of OSCE participating States have gone about abolishing the death penalty in law and in practice in Part II, looking at the road to abolition in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Latvia and the American state of Virginia. Part III covers the status of the death penalty in the OSCE region during the reporting period. 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. A de-facto abolitionist state is one in which the death penalty is foreseen in law, but in practice the punishment is not imposed. A retentionist state is one that continues to implement this penalty by sentencing and carrying out executions. 6