A/RES/53/221 Page 7 9. Notes with concern that the Secretary-General, in his report on human resources management,7 approved seventeen exceptions for the recruitment of gratis personnel in the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, in contravention of section III.B, paragraph 26, of General Assembly resolution 51/226; 10. Reaffirms the provisions of section III.B, paragraph 26, of its resolution 51/226, and requests the Secretary-General to ensure full compliance in the future; 11. Requests the Secretary-General not to extend the current contracts of the personnel mentioned in paragraph 9 above and, in this context, to ensure full compliance with the current recruitment procedures of the International Tribunal; 12. Also requests the Secretary-General, while filling vacant posts in language services in the Secretariat, to ensure the highest performance of translation and interpretation in all six official languages; 13. Further requests the Secretary-General to continue to improve existing recruitment and placement procedures with a view to making them simpler, more transparent and more timely; 14. Requests the Secretary-General to ensure, without exception, uniform application of the regulations and rules of the Organization in all departments of the Secretariat, in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the General Assembly; 15. Urges the Secretary-General, when making appointments to posts subject to geographical distribution, to continue and intensify his efforts to ensure that all Member States, in particular unrepresented and underrepresented Member States, are adequately represented in the Secretariat, bearing in mind the need to increase the number of staff recruited from Member States below the mid-point of their desirable ranges; 16. Reaffirms that the national competitive examination programme is a useful tool for selecting the bestqualified candidates from inadequately represented Member States, and requests the Secretary-General to continue to hold the examinations for posts subject to geographical distribution at the P-2 and, if necessary, P-3 levels; 17. Urges the Secretary-General strictly to comply with the principle that appointment to P-2 posts and to posts requiring special language competence for conference services be made exclusively through competitive examinations, and requests, in this context, that he include in his future reports the information justifying noncompliance with that principle; 18. Reaffirms the policy that appointments at the P-3 level shall normally be made through competitive examinations; 19. Requests the Secretary-General to ensure that candidates selected through national competitive examinations are placed in a timely fashion and that special efforts are made to recruit candidates from the national competitive examinations roster against existing vacancies until these rosters are cleared; 7 A/53/342, paras. 91–94. /...