Foreword The death penalty is gradually disappearing from the OSCE region. With Uzbekistan abolishing capital punishment on 1 January 2008, there are only two OSCE participating States that still carry out executions. OSCE commitments do not require the abolition of the death penalty. However, participating States have committed themselves to using the death penalty as punishment for only the most serious crimes and in a manner not contrary to their international commitments, and to keeping the question of capital punishment under consideration.1 OSCE states have also committed themselves to making information on the use of the death penalty available to the public.2 It is with a view to assisting participating States’ compliance with these commitments that ODIHR has, since 1999, published an annual background paper on the death penalty in the OSCE area for the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM). This background paper provides a forum for participating States to make information on the use of the death penalty available. This year’s paper offers a concise update that only highlights changes in the status of the death penalty since the last publication. ODIHR collected information for this paper from participating States themselves,3 as well as from OSCE field presences,4 intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and media reports. This paper classifies the participating States according to the categories of abolitionist, partly abolitionist, de facto abolitionist, or retentionist, and outlines country developments, if any, in all four categories with a more in-depth analysis of developments in the retentionist countries. 1  For a list of relevant OSCE commitments, see Annex 1. 2  Copenhagen Document 1990, para. 17.8. 3  A copy of the questionnaire that was sent to participating States requesting information on the use of the death penalty is attached as Annex 4. Of the seven recipients of the questionnaire, four participating States responded: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and the United States of America. 4  ODIHR is grateful to the OSCE Office in Minsk and the OSCE Centre in Astana for responding to the questionnaire. v