In a unanimous vote that will soon add their nation to a lengthy list of countries around the world that have either halted executions or abandoned capital punishment altogether, the lower house of Tajikistan’s Parliament has adopted a moratorium on the death penalty. Passage by the upper house and the signature of the President are reportedly assured. The Tajik moratorium will leave Uzbekistan as the only republic in Central Asia that continues to carry out executions. Experts on Central Asia believe that pressure from leaders of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union, which has the abolition of the death penalty as one of the main elements of its foreign policy in relations with third countries, has facilitated much of the shift toward abolition in this region. “The move of Tajikistan is part of a wider trend within the OSCE region,” said Anna Crawford, a Warsaw-based human rights officer for the OSCE. “Over the past years we’ve gradually seen the OSCE states introducing moratoriums and moving to full abolition of the death penalty. There are 55 participating states in the OSCE region. And following this move of Tajikistan, there are now only three states that carry out executions in the OSCE region: Belarus, the United States of America, and Uzbekistan.” Last year, Tajikistan reduced the scope of its death penalty by limiting the number of crimes punishable by death from 15 to five and revoking its use against women and minors. In April, Tajikistan’s President Imomali Rakhmonov called for a moratorium to be put into place, noting through a representative to parliament that courts in the nation are already abiding by a de facto moratorium. (RFE/RL News, June 3, 2004) See International Death Penalty.