The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), the world’s largest region­al secu­ri­ty orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of 56 States includ­ing the U.S., recent­ly pub­lished a 2009 Background Paper on The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area. It was pre­pared by the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and updates the 2008 back­ground paper of the same title. The 2009 paper high­lights the changes in sta­tus of the death penal­ty in par­tic­i­pat­ing OSCE states. Of the 56 coun­tries, only the U.S. and Belarus retain an active death penal­ty. The Russian Federation and Tajikistan retain the death penal­ty but are not car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. The full text of the paper can be found in English and Russian on ODIHR’s pub­li­ca­tion page.

(The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2009)). Posted Oct. 28, 2009. See also International and Studies.

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