Human Rights Snježana Bokulic´, the Head of the ODIHR Human Rights Department, presents ODIHR’s new human rights education guidelines for law enforcement officials and secondary schools, together with Pavel Chacuk, an ODIHR Human Rights Adviser, Felisa Tibbitts of Human Rights Associates and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and Cristina Sganga, a Human Rights Trainer and Adviser, Warsaw, 24 September 2012. (OSCE/Piotr Markowski) ODIHR continues to monitor the situation of human rights defenders. In November 2012 an ODIHR delegation, jointly with representatives of the OSCE Office in Bishkek, visited human rights defender Azimjan Askarov in prison in Bishkek. Askarov is serving a life imprisonment term following proceedings that are widely regarded as having fallen short of international fair trial standards.  ODIHR briefed the Human Dimension Committee on the relevant issues and developments regarding the death penalty in September 2012, and presented the 2012 Background Paper on the Death Penalty in the OSCE Region at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. The publication is compiled annually to facilitate the exchange of information on the question of abolition among participating States. Human Rights Education and Capacity Building In July 2012, ODIHR conducted two training seminars for Belarusian trainers and educators, to promote the use of the ODIHRdeveloped human rights education training manuals for Belarus. Protecting and promoting human rights through active participation, one of the ODIHR-supported tools promoted in the training, was subsequently named best publication at the Fourth Festival of Non-Formal Education in Belarus, held on 7 to 9 December in Minsk. To promote effective human rights education and to support OSCE participating States in the implementation of their human dimension commitments, ODIHR published two sets of guidelines on human rights education in 2012. The Guidelines on Human Rights Education for Law Enforcement Officials and the Guidelines on Human Rights Education for Secondary School Systems were developed in recognition of the key role law enforcement officials play in safeguarding human rights and of the importance of schools in helping young people better understand and defend their rights. The role of police agencies in the provision of systemic and effective human rights education for their personnel and effective implementation of the Guidelines on Human Rights Education for Law Enforcement Officials was further discussed on 10 and 11 December 2012 in Istanbul, at a meeting organized by ODIHR and the OSCE Strategic Police Matters Unit of the OSCE Transnational Threats department, with the support of the Turkish National Police. More than 40 police officers and representatives from police academies, civil society and international ODIHR Annual Report 2012 47