The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area 2.1 De-Facto abolitionist participating States Three OSCE participating States are de-facto abolitionist. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and the Russian Federation, still retain, in law, the death penalty for crimes committed in peacetime but have moratoriums on executions. Throughout the reporting period, all three countries continued to observe their official moratoriums on the use of the death penalty. In the Russian Federation, the application of the death penalty has been suspended since 1996, but capital punishment is still mentioned in federal legislation and formally listed as one of the types of criminal punishment. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (CCRF) stipulates the application of the death penalty as an exceptional measure for five types of offences. However, it may not be imposed against women, offenders under the age of 18 or over 65 at the time of sentencing, or against offenders extradited to the Russian Federation by a foreign state. In the report of the UN High-Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/30/21, para. 42), it was noted that the Russian Federation was considering acceding to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. The ECtHR concluded on 29 October 2015, that, in view of what it called the Russian Federation’s unequivocal undertaking to abolish the death penalty, partly fulfilled through an initially de facto moratorium, subsequently confirmed de jure by the Constitutional Court Judgment – 1344-O-P of 19 December 2009150 the death penalty, “has become a form of punishment that is no longer permissible under article 2 (…) and that it amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if the Russian Federation is yet to ratify Protocols Nos. 6 and 13 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR).”151 During the reporting period, individual members of the Russian parliament, from both the lower and upper houses, called for the reintroduction of the death penalty. In October 2015, a member of the Communist caucus in the State Duma urged fellow lawmakers to allow the death penalty for terrorists as an extraordinary measure and, “a supreme measure of social protection.” In November 2015 a member of the Liberal Democratic Party introduced a bill in parliament proposing the expansion of the scope of the death penalty for terrorism.152 150  Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Judgment – 1344-O-P of 19 December 2009, according to the Opinion of the Constitutional Court, there is a complex moratorium of the death penalty in the Russian Federation which further develops the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution. Within this regime and based on the international legal tendencies and commitments of the Russian Federation, there is an irreversible process of the complete abolition of the death penalty as an exceptional punishment of a temporary nature and acceptable only during the transition period, namely until the goal set in part 2 of the article 20 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation is achieved. 151  European Court of Human Rights, Case of A.L. (X.W.) v. Russia, (Application no. 44095/14), Judgment of 29 October 2015, final 29 January 2016, para. 64 and para. 120, <http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-158148#{“itemid”:[“001-158148”]} >. 152  Amnesty International, op. cit. note 24. 37