A/72/53/Add.1
independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the right of peoples to selfdetermination;
4.
Requests all States to exercise the utmost vigilance against any kind of
recruitment, training, hiring or financing of mercenaries;
5.
Also requests all States to exercise the utmost vigilance in banning the use of
private companies offering international military consultancy and security services when
intervening in armed conflicts or actions to destabilize constitutional regimes;
6.
Calls upon all States that have not yet become a party to the International
Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries to
consider taking the necessary action to do so;
7.
Welcomes the cooperation extended by those countries that were visited by
the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and
impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination, and the adoption by
some States of national legislation that restricts the recruitment, assembly, financing,
training and transit of mercenaries;
8.
Condemns mercenary activities in developing countries in various parts of the
world, in particular in areas of conflict, and the threat they pose to the integrity of and
respect for the constitutional order of those countries and to the exercise of the right to selfdetermination of their peoples, and stresses the importance for the Working Group of
looking into sources and root causes, and into the political motivations of mercenaries and
for mercenary-related activities;
9.
Calls upon States to investigate the possibility of mercenary and mercenaryrelated involvement whenever and wherever criminal acts of a terrorist nature occur and to
bring to trial those found responsible or to consider their extradition, if so requested, in
accordance with national law and applicable bilateral or international treaties;
10.
Recognizes that mercenary activity is a complex crime in which criminal
responsibility falls upon those who have recruited, employed, trained and financed the
mercenary or mercenaries, and upon those who have planned and ordered their criminal
activity;
11.
Condemns any form of impunity granted to perpetrators of mercenary
activities and to those responsible for the use, recruitment, financing and training of
mercenaries, and urges all States, in accordance with their obligations under international
law, to bring them, without distinction, to justice;
12.
Calls upon the international community and all States, in accordance with
their obligations under international law, to cooperate with and assist the judicial
prosecution of those accused of mercenary activities, in transparent, open and fair trials;
13.
Acknowledges with appreciation the work and contributions of the Working
Group, including its research activities, and welcomes its most recent report;4
14.
Requests the Working Group and other experts to continue their participation,
including by submitting contributions, in other subsidiary bodies of the Human Rights
Council considering issues related to the use of mercenaries and mercenary-related
activities in all their forms and manifestations, including private military and security
companies;
15.
Requests the Working Group to continue the work already carried out by
previous mandate holders on the strengthening of the international legal framework for the
prevention and sanction of the recruitment, use, financing and training of mercenaries,
taking into account the proposal for a new legal definition of the term “mercenary” drafted
by the Special Rapporteur on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights
and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination in his report
submitted to the Commission on Human Rights at its sixtieth session, 5 and also the
evolving phenomenon of mercenaries and its related forms;
4
5
10
A/HRC/36/47.
E/CN.4/2004/15.
GE.17-18194
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