The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area 31 shall be condemned to such penalty or executed.” The Protocol gives states the option of making provision in their laws for the death penalty in respect of acts committed in time of war or of imminent threat of war.22 The idea of abolishing the death penalty at the level of a universal instrument under international law is further envisioned in the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aimed at the abolition of the death penalty (15 December 1989). With a view to strengthening human dignity and the progressive development of human rights, the first article of this Protocol establishes that “no one within the jurisdiction of a State Party to the present Protocol shall be executed.” In addition, the Protocol obliges each state party “to take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty within its jurisdiction.” Unlike Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention, this instrument prohibits any reservations “to the present Protocol, except for a reservation made at the time of ratification or accession that provides for the application of the death penalty in time of war pursuant to a conviction for a most serious crime of a military nature committed during wartime.” Based on the measures that have been adopted, the current global tendency is characterized by the fact that the number of countries that have abolished the death penalty far outweighs the number of countries that retain it in their legislation. In 2001, 109 countries worldwide had abolished the death penalty while 86 retained it. As far as the OSCE region is concerned, it should be noted that the tendency here is even more evident. As of 30 June 2005, only nine participating States had capital punishment in their legislation. Throughout its entire history, as an autonomous republic of the Soviet Union, as well as a sovereign state, the Republic of Tajikistan has experienced all the tendencies regarding the development of legal thought and judicial practice in relation to the death penalty. If, during the Soviet era, Tajikistan, along with all of the other Union republics, carried out Moscow’s instructions on all issues, including with respect to the death penalty (and it is not by chance that Tajikistan’s criminal legislation went through a period when the death penalty was abolished and then restored), then as a sovereign state, this issue has been resolved consciously, taking into account specific historical conditions that the country has experienced during the initial years of its development as an independent state. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union took place suddenly and the particular features associated with the Union republics acquiring independence were also dictated by these realities, the legislative base could not be updated overnight. Furthermore, 22 See V.A. Kartashkin, Mezhdunarodnie mekhanizmy zashchity prav cheloveka. Kak podat’ zhalobu v mezhdunarodnie organy (Moscow, 2003), p. 89.