The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area
(d) Not to impose the death penalty for any but the most serious crimes and only
pursuant to a final judgement rendered by an independent and impartial competent
court, and to ensure the right to a fair trial and the right to seek pardon or commutation of sentence;
(e) To ensure that all legal proceedings, including those before special tribunals
or jurisdictions, and particularly those related to capital offences, conform to the minimum procedural guarantees contained in article 14 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights;
(f) To ensure that the notion of “most serious crimes” does not go beyond intentional crimes with lethal or extremely grave consequences and that the death penalty
is not imposed for non violent acts such as financial crimes, religious practice or expression of conscience and sexual relations between consenting adults;
(g) Not to enter any new reservations under article 6 of the Covenant which
may be contrary to the object and the purpose of the Covenant and to withdraw any
such existing reservations, given that article 6 enshrines the minimum rules for the
protection of the right to life and the generally accepted standards in this area;
(h) To observe the safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those
facing the death penalty and to comply fully with their international obligations, in
particular with those under article 36 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular
Relations, particularly the right to receive information on consular assistance within
the context of a legal procedure, as affirmed by the jurisprudence of the International
Court of Justice and confirmed in recent relevant judgments;
(i) To ensure that, where capital punishment occurs, it shall be carried out so
as to inflict the minimum possible suffering and shall not be carried out in public or in
any other degrading manner, and to ensure that any application of particularly cruel
or inhuman means of execution, such as stoning, is stopped immediately;
(j) Not to execute any person as long as any related legal procedure, at the international or at the national level, is pending;
5. Calls upon all States that still maintain the death penalty:
(a) To abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a
moratorium on executions;
(b) Progressively to restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty
may be imposed and, at the least, not to extend its application to crimes to which it
does not at present apply;
(c) To make available to the public information with regard to the imposition of
the death penalty and to any scheduled execution;
(d) To provide to the SecretaryGeneral and relevant United Nations bodies information relating to the use of capital punishment and the observance of the safeguards
guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty as contained in
Economic and Social Council resolution 1984/50;
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