Plan International - Girls' Rights Platform - Girls' rights are human rights: Positioning girls at the heart of the international agenda

A/HRC/RES/21/8 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 10 October 2012 Original: English Human Rights Council Twenty-first session Agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council 21/8. The use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination The Human Rights Council, Recalling all previous resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the Commission on Human Rights on the subject, including Assembly resolution 64/151 of 18 December 2009 and Council resolutions 10/11 of 26 March 2009, 15/12 of 30 September 2010, 15/26 of 1 October 2010 and 18/4 of 29 September 2011, Recalling also all relevant resolutions that, inter alia, condemn any State that permits or tolerates the recruitment, financing, training, assembly, transit or use of mercenaries with the objective of overthrowing the Governments of States Members of the United Nations, especially those of developing countries, or of fighting against national liberation movements, and recalling further the relevant resolutions and international instruments adopted by the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the African Union and the Organization of African Unity, inter alia, the Organization of African Unity Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa, Reaffirming the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations concerning the strict observance of the principles of sovereign equality, political independence, the territorial integrity of States, the self-determination of peoples, the nonuse of force or threat of use of force in international relations and non-interference in affairs within the domestic jurisdiction of States, Reaffirming also that, by virtue of the principle of self-determination, all peoples have the right to determine freely their political status and to pursue freely their economic, social and cultural development, and that every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter,  GE.12-17329 The resolutions and decisions adopted by the Human Rights Council will be contained in the report of the Council on its twenty-first session (A/HRC/21/2), chap. I.