EXPERTS TO MEET IN GENEVA TO STUDY IMPACT OF MERCENARIES

3 December 2004



The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will host from 6 to 10 December 2004 an expert meeting on traditional and new forms of mercenary activity as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the rights of peoples to self-determination.

International experts from academia and the human rights community will meet to give further consideration to the proposed new legal definition of "mercenary", make proposals on possible means of regulation of private companies offering military assistance, consultancy and security services on the international market, and study and evaluate recent activities of mercenaries in Africa.

The meeting, the third of its kind, is organized pursuant to requests from the Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly. The first meeting was held from 29 January to 2 February 2001, and was convened "to study and update the international legislation in force and to propose recommendations for a clearer legal definition of mercenaries that would allow for more efficient prevention and punishment of mercenary activities". The second meeting took place from 13 to17 May 2002 to continue studying and updating the relevant international legislation and to make recommendations for a clearer legal definition of mercenaries that would make more efficient the prevention and punishment of mercenary activities.

Participants will include 11 experts from all the geographical regions invited in their personal capacity, as well as the Special Rapporteur on the use of mercenaries, Shaista Shameem. A report on the meeting will be considered at the sixty-first session of the Commission on Human Rights in the spring of 2005.

For more information on the issue of mercenaries, please visit our website: http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/mercenaries/annual.htm


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