A/HRC/4/20 page 14 49. The provision ultimately adopted by the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly largely adopted this approach: “In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, capital punishment may be imposed only for the most serious crimes, it being understood that their scope should not go beyond intentional crimes with lethal or other extremely grave consequences.”97 50. The safeguards drafted by the Committee were adopted by the Economic and Social Council and subsequently by the General Assembly,98 and the Secretary-General was requested by the Council to report on the implementation of the safeguards by States.99 The reports of the Secretary-General have clarified the meaning accorded in practice to the phrase “intentional crimes with lethal or other extremely grave consequences”. While noting that it has given rise to “wide interpretation by a number of countries”, the Secretary-General concluded that “the meaning of intentional crimes and of lethal or other extremely grave consequences is intended to imply that the offences should be life-threatening, in the sense that this is a very likely consequence of the action”.100 51. With respect to particular offences, the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee have determined that a wide range of specific offences fall outside the scope of the “most serious crimes” for which the death penalty may be imposed.101 These include: abduction not resulting in death,102 abetting suicide,103 adultery,104 apostasy,105 corruption,106 drug-related offences,107 economic crimes,108 the expression of conscience,109 financial crimes,110 embezzlement by officials,111 evasion of military service,112 homosexual acts,113 illicit sex,114 sexual relations between consenting adults,115 theft or robbery by force,116 religious practice,117 and political offences.118 The last of these has presented particular complexities, inasmuch as offences against the State or the political order are often drawn broadly so as to encompass both non-serious and very serious crimes and ambiguously so as to leave the Government discretion in defining the offence. Instances in which the Committee has expressed concern that offences carrying the death penalty are “excessively vague”,119 “imprecise”,120 “loosely defined”,121 “so broad [as to encompass] a wide range of acts of differing gravity”,122 or “couched in terms so broad that the imposition of the death penalty may be subject to essentially subjective criteria”123 have included legislation regarding “opposition to order and national security violations”,124 “attacks against the internal security of the State”125, “categories of offences relating to internal and external security”,126 “secession, espionage or incitement to war”,127 a broadly written definition of terrorism,128 and various other political offences.129 52. The Human Rights Committee has reached conclusions regarding the principled content of the “most serious crimes” provision that are consistent with, and give further refinement to, those expressed in the safeguards and the comments of the Secretary-General. In one of its earliest general comments, the Committee observed that: “[t]he deprivation of life by the authorities of the State is a matter of the utmost gravity. Therefore, the law must strictly control and limit the circumstances in which a person may be deprived of his life by such authorities . ... The Committee is of the opinion that the expression ‘most serious crimes’ must be read restrictively to mean that the death penalty should be a quite exceptional measure.”130 This analysis has been greatly refined over the ensuing decades through the insights provided by