Use of Mercenaries as a Means to Violate Human Rights and to Impede the Exercise of the Right of People to Self-Determination

A/RES/50/138View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 104 Right of peoples to self-determination, published in 1996.

What subjects does this mandate have?

7 subjects

Advisory Services Information Dissemination Mercenaries National Liberation Movements Self-Determination of Peoples Signatures, Accessions, Ratifications Treaties

What’s in this document?

7 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights³ on the use of mercenaries and mercenary-related activities to topple sovereign Governments and to undermine the rights of peoples to self-determination despite resolution 49/150;

³A/50/390 and Add.1.

Reaffirms that the use of mercenaries and their recruitment, financing and training are causes for grave concern to all States and violate the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;

Urges all States to take the necessary steps and to exercise the utmost vigilance against the menace posed by the activities of mercenaries and to take necessary legislative measures to ensure that their territories and other territories under their control, as well as their nationals, are not used for the recruitment, assembly, financing, training and transit of mercenaries for the planning of activities designed to destabilize or overthrow the Government of any State or threaten the territorial integrity and political unity of sovereign States, or to promote secession or fight the national liberation movements struggling against colonial or other forms of alien domination or occupation;

Calls upon all States which have not yet done so to consider taking necessary action to sign or to ratify the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries;

Urges all States to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur in the fulfilment of his mandate;

Requests the Centre for Human Rights of the Secretariat, as a matter of priority, to publicize the adverse effects of mercenary activities on the right to self-determination and, when requested where necessary, to render advisory services to States which are affected by the activities of mercenaries;

Requests the Special Rapporteur to report, with specific recommendations, his findings on the new elements identified in the use of mercenaries to undermine the rights of peoples to self-determination to the General Assembly at its fifty-first session.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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