Human Rights k Death penalty: OSCE participating States have committed themselves to keeping the question of capital punishment open and to exchanging information on abolition of the death penalty. Some of the participating States that retain the death penalty continue to treat information on capital punishment as a state secret, and the level of public discourse on the use of the death penalty is often limited. OSCE commitments and international human rights law place a number of safeguards on the use of the death penalty, such as the requirement to ensure that trials leading to the imposition of the death penalty comply with national and international fairtrial standards. In some participating States, there are concerns about the imposition of the death penalty following trials that fail to comply with fair-trial standards. k Fair trials1: In some countries of the OSCE region, there are persisting concerns with regard to compliance with international fair-trial standards that are raised by national and international actors. These concerns relate to the independence of the judiciary from executive authorities, the effectiveness of legal representation and access to legal aid, and compliance with the principle of equality of arms during trial proceedings, in particular the need for lawyers and prosecutors to ensure the adversarial nature of proceedings. There are also concerns about public access to trials: available reports highlight widespread problems with public access to trial schedules, to venues where trials are conducted, and to final court decisions. Activities In the field of human rights, the ODIHR has three structural objectives: 1. To collect, analyse, and disseminate information with regard to implementation of OSCE commitments relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms, and through this process 1 Please see Rule of Law on pp. 27-28 for more information on the ODIHR’s work on fair trials. 52 to contribute to early warning, conflict prevention, and improving the human rights situation across the OSCE region; 2. To strengthen and support national structures and institutions tasked to promote and protect human rights in OSCE participating States; and 3. To strengthen the capacity of the OSCE as an organization to assist the participating States in protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms by providing support and expertise to OSCE structures, including field operations. The ODIHR conducted activities in the following areas in 2005: k Monitoring compliance with human dimension commitments; k Ensuring respect for human rights in the fight against terrorism; k Human rights training and education; k Trafficking in human beings: respecting victims’ rights; and k Women’s rights and security. I. Monitoring compliance with human dimension commitments Trial-monitoring Trial monitors assess the fairness of court proceedings and whether they comply with OSCE commitments and other international standards. Trial-monitoring is concerned only with the fairness of a trial, not with the guilt or innocence of the accused. The information gathered through monitoring trials can form a basis for reform efforts, as well as feed into institutionbuilding projects conducted by the ODIHR and other international organizations. In 2005, the ODIHR continued trial-monitoring activities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as part of a two-year project funded by the European Commission that was launched in 2004. Since their initial training, monitors have been observing criminal cases in local and regional courts in both countries in order to gather information about the compliance of court practices with fair-trial guarantees, particularly the right to a fair and public hearing, equality of arms, ANNUAL REPORT 2005