Human Rights k Recognizing the need for state bodies to provide security for assembly participants; k Considering the possibility of introducing legislative provisions that would allow for mediation of disputes related to assemblies; and k Ensuring transparency in all stages of the legislative process by publishing draft laws related to the freedoms of assembly and association. To follow up on the conference, the ODIHR funded a small project in Kazakhstan through which civil society representatives received training in how to monitor peaceful assemblies and draft reports that could be used as the basis for preparing recommendations to the government on ways to improve national laws regulating freedom of assembly. Death penalty The ODIHR monitors developments regarding the death penalty with the aim of facilitating exchanges of information, increasing transparency, and encouraging compliance with international safeguards. The ODIHR produces an annual publication, The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area, which is released at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. This publication provides a com- ANNUAL REPORT 2005 States of public emergency “When a state of public emergency is declared or lifted in a participating State, the State concerned will immediately inform the [ODIHR] of this decision, as well as of any derogation made from the State’s international human rights obligations. The [ODIHR] will inform the other participating States without delay.” — Moscow Document, p. 28.10 In November, the Government of France informed the ODIHR that a state of public emergency had been declared following continued urban violence in parts of the country. parative overview of the use of the death penalty throughout the OSCE region based primarily on information provided by the participating States. The publication is distributed to targeted recipients in the OSCE area, including government officials, NGOs, international organizations, OSCE field presences, universities, research centres, and libraries. The use of capital punishment in the OSCE region continues to decrease. In 2005, Greece fully abolished the death penalty, Tajikistan introduced life imprisonment as an alternative to capital punishment, Uzbekistan committed to abolish the death penalty as of 1 January 2008, and the United States abolished the death penalty for minors. Thus, as of December 2005, nine participating States still retained the death penalty in some form, while only Belarus, the United States, and Uzbekistan were still carrying out executions. In 2005, the ODIHR continued its efforts to facilitate an exchange of information on the death penalty and its alternatives among officials and civil society in Central Asia. The ODIHR, in co-operation with the OSCE Centre in Almaty, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, the European Commission, Penal Reform International, and the Kazakh organization Charter for Human Rights, organized an international conference in November on alternatives to the death penalty in Central Asia. The conference, which brought together 85 governmental and non-governmental actors from Kaza- 55