22 The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area death penalty for acts committed in time of war or of imminent threat of war. The abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances (during times of peace and war) is covered by Protocol No. 13 to the Convention, which, unfortunately, Poland has signed but not ratified. United Nations The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides minimum universal standards for the protection of a number of human rights. As a state party to the Covenant, Poland has been bound by its provisions since 1977. Nevertheless, Poland is not party to the Second Optional Protocol, which limits the possible imposition of the death penalty to wartime for committing the most serious crimes of a military nature during wartime. Poland’s Fifth Periodic Report with respect to abolition of the death penalty, covering the period between January 1995 and October 2003, says that, because of the related subject matter of the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant and Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention, these two documents will be ratified at the same time, though no time frame for these ratifications was given. The Report further states that: “Extradition of a prosecuted person to a foreign State is inadmissible in the case when there are justified grounds to fear that in the State demanding the extradition, the extradited person may be sentenced to the death penalty or that [the] death penalty may be executed or that the extradited person may be subject to torture.” In its List of Issues of 16 August 2004, concerning Poland and its Fifth Periodic Report, the UN Human Rights Committee requested that Poland provide information about its decision on the issue of ratification of the Second Protocol. Poland has not responded to this request. Poland is also bound by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 37a) and the Economic and Social Council’s “Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty”. Furthermore, Poland, like all UN member states, is one of the addressees of the Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 6 on the right to life, of 30 April 1984, and of the UN Human Rights Commission’s Resolution No. 2004/67 on the question of the death penalty, in which the Commission calls upon the states parties to consider ratifying or acceding to the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe As a member of the OSCE, Poland is bound by commitments on the death penalty that are formulated in a number of OSCE documents, e.g., the concluding docu-