5. STATE RESPONSES TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN THE OSCE REGION All OSCE participating States have taken extraordinary measures to save lives and lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In accordance with the Moscow Document, participating States are to inform the OSCE when declaring a state of emergency. By June 2020, half of the participating States had communicated to the OSCE about “emergency measures adopted,” meaning about states of emergency and any potential derogations.67 57 participating States 28 informed ODIHR of emergency measures 14 communicated about declaring states of emergency or equivalent status Communications to ODIHR on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the OSCE region (June 2020) According to monitoring conducted by ODIHR, more than a third of OSCE participating States (officially declared states of public emergency; the remainder relied on national emergency powers and/or enacted specific laws to introduce emergency measures.68 Of the participating States that declared states of emergency or the equivalent status,69 half declared derogations from international human rights standards contained in the ICCPR or the ECHR. 67 ODIHR, “OSCE Human Dimension Commitments and State Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic”, op. cit., note 10, p. 25. 68 Ibid., pp. 20, 26-27. 69 Due to differences in national legislation, there is no single definition of what constitutes a “state of emergency” or of the procedure for declaring a state of emergency. As used in other ODIHR publications, the phrase “a status equivalent to a state of emergency” used here refers to the special and temporary emergency measures used to address the coronavirus pandemic by a number of OSCE participating States. 23