A/HRC/18/20 continue to consider and consult on the abolition of the death penalty and to report to the Human Rights Council in two years.10 12. China continued to apply the death penalty in a large number of cases.11 However, in July 2010, new regulations were jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Ministries of Public Security, State Security and Justice. These regulations strengthen the prohibition of the use of illegal evidence in criminal cases, including coerced confession and other evidence obtained through torture and other illtreatment, and enhance legal procedures regarding the collection, examination, verification and determination of the legality of evidence in cases that may lead to the imposition of the death penalty.12 In February 2011, the National People’s Congress in China also passed a law removing the death penalty for 13 non-violent economic crimes.13 13. In April 2011, the Parliament of Gambia abolished the death penalty for drug offences, which had been introduced in the Drug Control Amendment Act of 2010, observing that it had overlooked the constitutional prohibition against the death penalty for offences not resulting in death when adopting that piece of legislation. D. Countries that have ratified international and regional instruments providing for the abolition of the death penalty 14. On 6 December 2010, Kyrgyzstan became, through accession, the seventy-third State party to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. 15. A draft law providing for the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has been under consideration in the Parliament of Mongolia since 2010. 16. On 1 February 2011, the Council of Ministers of the transitional Government in Tunisia announced that it would ratify various international human rights instruments, including the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 17. There were no new ratifications of or accessions to the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty or to Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning the abolition of the death penalty during the reporting period. E. Countries that have introduced a moratorium on executions 18. 10 11 12 13 No new country introduced a moratorium on executions during the reporting period. Views on conclusions and/or recommendations, voluntary commitments and replies presented by Guyana in the context of the universal periodic review (A/HRC/15/14/Add.1), para. 52. See also paras. 31-34. Amnesty International, Death Sentences (note 6 above), p. 17; see also para. 23 below. Amnesty International, Death Sentences, p. 19. China, “China exempts 13 crimes from death penalty”. Available from http://english.gov.cn/201102/25/content_1810870.htm, Feb. 25, 2011. 5