Foreword The overwhelming majority of the 56 participating States of the OSCE have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In accordance with its mandate to monitor developments regarding the death penalty in the OSCE area, the ODIHR reports on this issue to the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. The background paper presents analysis and recent data. Last year, five essays were included on different approaches to the death penalty that continue to provide useful and topical viewpoints on the developments in the use of the death penalty in the context of the OSCE region. Chapter 1 of this background paper classifies the participating States according to the categories of abolitionist, partly abolitionist, de facto abolitionist, or retentionist. In the past year, there has been a trend towards abolition and reduction of the use of the death penalty. Albania and Kyrgyzstan joined the abolitionist states. In February 2007, Albania ratified Protocol 13 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances, including time of war or of imminent threat and thereby moved from being a partly abolitionist to an abolitionist state. On 27 June 2007, Kyrgyzstan enacted a law abolishing the death penalty in all circumstances and replacing it with life imprisonment. Kazakhstan, which had been de facto abolitionist, joined the group of partly abolitionist states. On 21 May 2007, Kazakhstan promulgated amendments to the Constitution restricting the imposition of the death penalty to acts of terrorism leading to the death of people and grave crimes committed in wartime. In 2006 and 2007, Moldova, Georgia, and France removed death-penalty provisions from their constitutions. While OSCE participating States are not required to abolish the death penalty, they have made a number of commitments regarding its use. In particular, participating States have committed themselves to impose the death penalty only in a manner that is not contrary to their international commitments and to make information   This paper updates Background Paper 2006. The reporting period covered by this paper is from 30 June 2006 to 30 June 2007.   Since it did not use the death penalty during the reporting period, no entry for Albania appears in this paper.