A/HRC/10/14 page 8 E. Other activities 24. The Chairperson-Rapporteur presented the Working Group’s annual report to the Human Rights Council on 18 March 2008 (A/HRC/7/7 and Add.1-5) and the Working Group’s annual report to the General Assembly on 3 November 2008 (A/63/325). The Chairperson-Rapporteur reiterated before the General Assembly the concerns of the Working Group regarding the lack of regulation at both national and international level of the activities of private military and security companies. He highlighted that these companies recruit and train thousands of citizens from all over the world, from both developed and developing countries, to perform tasks in Afghanistan, Iraq and other zones of armed conflict. Activities of private military and security companies cannot be regulated on the basis of the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries alone, and a new international legal instrument, possibly in the format of a new convention, is required, which might be supplemented by another legal instrument, such as tentatively a model law, which would assist national Governments in the elaboration and adoption of national legislation on the regulation of the sector. 25. On 31 January and 1 February 2008, Mr. Gómez del Prado and Ms. Benavides de Pérez participated in the international conference “The Privatization of Security and Human Rights in the Americas: Perspectives from the Global South” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which established an international research network on private military and security companies. 26. On 5 and 6 June 2008, Mr. Gómez del Prado participated in the conference “The Social Construction of Threat and the Changing Relation between Liberty and Security” at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. 27. On 11 September 2008, Mr. Gómez del Prado addressed 43 students from 33 countries in a course within the Programme in Security, Stability, Transition and Reconstruction and participated at a panel discussion at the Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany). 28. From 24 to 27 September 2008, Mr Gómez del Prado participated in Caracas at the 7th Social Summit for the Union of Latin America and the Caribbean, organized by the Latin American Parliament and the Government of Venezuela. Following his participation, a paragraph was included in the Declaration for Peace, against Terrorism adopted at the Summit urging countries to ratify the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries and to elaborate common legislation to prevent private military and security companies usurping inherently State functions, such as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. 29. On 24 and 25 November 2008, the Chairperson-Rapporteur Alexander Nikitin participated in a workshop on the consequences of the rise of private military and security services at the Institute of Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College, and on 26-27 November 2008, made two presentations on regulating private military and security companies at the plenary session and section of the symposium “Humanitarian space and military operations” organized by the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defence, the Danish Red Cross and the Danish Institute for Human Rights. He also prepared and published a book devoted to privatization in the military and security spheres, with a special emphasis on principles for the regulation of private military and security companies.