COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS CHAIRMAN APPOINTS MEMBER OF PANEL ON MERCENARIES

6 October 2005




The Chairman of the sixty-first session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Makarim Wibisono, today announced the appointment of José Luis Gómez del Prado to serve as member of the newly-created Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination.

Mr. Gomez del Prado (Spain), a former senior official of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and an expert in special rights mechanisms and technical cooperation, will join Shaista Shameem (Fiji), Alexander Ivanovich Nikitin (Russian Federation), Najat Al-Hajjaji (Libya) and Amada Benavides de Pérez (Colombia) in the Working Group.

The five experts, who serve in their individual capacity and independently of any Government, will hold their first session next week in Geneva's Palais des Nations.