Overview Pursuant to its mandate, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has monitored the use of the death penalty in the OSCE region since 1999. OSCE participating States have pledged to exchange information on the question of abolishing capital punishment at the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting and to keep that question under consideration. The participating States have also agreed to make information available to the public on their use of the death penalty and to co-operate within relevant international organizations on the issue.1 Moreover, the OSCE Commitments have noted the adoption of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the provisions of Protocol Six to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, both of which seek to abolish the death penalty in peacetime.2 Participating States have agreed to restrict the use of capital punishment to the “most serious crimes” and in a manner “not contrary to their international commitments”.3 Such commitments, as referenced in Copenhagen (1990), include Article Six of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights among other “restrictions and safeguards…[on] the death penalty…adopted by the international community,” and those safeguards found in regional human rights instruments, such as the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the American Convention on Human Rights, as applicable. Fifty-one of the 56 participating States of the OSCE have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Three participating States, Kazakhstan, Russia and Tajikistan, retain the death penalty in law but have in place moratoriums on executions. Two participating States, Belarus and the United States, continue to impose the death penalty. At the last OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting held in Warsaw from 26 September to 7 October 2011, participants made several recommendations relating to the death penalty. These included: to introduce a moratorium on the death penalty, and if a moratorium already exists, to abolish the death penalty and to 1  OSCE Vienna Document 1989, para. 24; and OSCE Copenhagen Document, 1990, para. 17.7, respectively. Previously, and in the Copenhagen document, the event was called the “Conference on the Human Dimension” , see Annex 1. 2  Copenhagen (1990) paragraph 17.2, 17.4. Note that 47 participating States have ratified or acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR. The Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR referred to in Copenhagen (1990), abolishes capital punishment during peacetime and for wartime offenses that are not of the “most serious” nature. 3  Vienna (1989), op. cit., note 1. v