The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2017 4. Calls upon states applying the death penalty to declare an immediate moratorium on executions; (…) 6. Encourages the states that have not abolished the death penalty to respect safeguards protecting the rights of those facing the death penalty, as laid down in the United Nations Economic and Social Council Safeguards; calls on the Council and the Commission to encourage those remaining countries which have not signed and ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to do so, and those Member States that have not signed Protocol No 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights on the death penalty to do so; 7. Calls on OSCE member states, in particular the United States and Belarus, to adopt an immediate moratorium on executions; 8. Calls on Kazakhstan and Latvia to amend provisions in their national legislation that still allow for the imposition of the death penalty for certain crimes under exceptional circumstances; 9. Strongly encourages EU Member States and all co-sponsors of the 2007 and 2008 UNGA resolutions to introduce, in the framework of a reinforced cross-regional alliance, a third resolution on the death penalty at UNGA65 which should in priority address: the abolition of ‘State secrets’ regarding the death penalty; the position of a Special Envoy who would not only monitor the situation and apply pressure with a view to increased transparency within the systems of capital punishment, but also continue to persuade those who still maintain the death penalty to adopt the UN line for a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty; the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold for the lawful application of capital punishment; 10. Calls on the OSCE participating states to encourage the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and OSCE Missions, in cooperation with the Council of Europe, to conduct awareness-raising activities against recourse to the death penalty, particularly with the media, law enforcement officials, policy-makers and the general public; 11. Calls on retentionist OSCE states to treat information concerning the death penalty in a transparent manner, providing public information on the identity of individuals sentenced to death or executed and statistics on the use of the death penalty, in accordance with OSCE commitments; 94