A/HRC/4/20 page 8 21. Two years later, in relation to the same situation, the Commission “[c]ondemn[ed] categorically all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by all sides”.17 It then applied international humanitarian law to the situation and “denounce[d] continued deliberate and unlawful attacks and uses of military force against civilians and other protected persons … non-combatants, … [and] … relief operations”.18 22. Third, in relation to Rwanda, the Commission “[c]ondemn[ed] in the strongest terms all breaches of international humanitarian law … and call[ed] upon all the parties involved to cease immediately these breaches”.19 It also “[c]all[ed] upon the Government of Rwanda to … take measures to put an end to all violations of … international humanitarian law by all persons within its jurisdiction or under its control”.20 23. As these examples make clear, both the Commission and the Council clearly and repeatedly accepted that international humanitarian law formed part of the Commission’s terms of reference. In replacing the Commission by the Council, the General Assembly in no way undertook to narrow its competence in this respect.21 3. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate 24. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate is “to examine … questions related to summary or arbitrary executions”. No reference is made to a limiting legal framework which would exclude certain such executions.22 Instead, the mandate has been defined in terms of the phenomenon of executions, in whatever context they might occur. In contrast, the United States position is that “while the Special Rapporteur may have reported on cases outside of his mandate, this does not give [him] the competence to address such issues”. It is certainly correct that the Special Rapporteur’s practice does not, on its own, establish competence. But when based on the terms of the relevant resolutions, and reinforced by the actions and votes of Governments in the Commission, the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur is clearly not acting unilaterally. Of the many possible illustrations of this process,23 the following are indicative. 25. First, in 1983, in the very first report under the mandate, my distinguished predecessor, Mr. Amos Wako, included a substantive section on “Killings in war, armed conflict and states of emergency” under the heading of international legal standards.24 In that section, he noted that “[t]he Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 are also relevant … Each of the Geneva Conventions clearly prohibits murder and other acts of violence against protected persons. They explicitly provide that ‘wilful killings’ are to be considered ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Conventions, that is, war crimes subject to universality of jurisdiction.”25 His report was endorsed by the Commission.26 26. Second, in January 1992 Mr. Wako annexed to his annual report a “List of Instruments and other Standards which Constitute the Legal Framework of the Mandate of the Special Rapporteur”.27 The Geneva Conventions appear as item 3 in a 14-point list. This report was also endorsed by the Commission which explicitly “welcome[d] his recommendations …”,28 some of which had focused explicitly on extrajudicial executions during armed conflict.29