A/RES/63/164
United Nations
Distr.: General
13 February 2009
General Assembly
Sixty-third session
Agenda item 63
Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 18 December 2008
[on the report of the Third Committee (A/63/429)]
63/164. Use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights
and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples
to self-determination
The General Assembly,
Recalling all of its previous resolutions on the subject, including resolution
62/145 of 18 December 2007, and Human Rights Council resolution 7/21 of
28 March 2008, 1 as well as all resolutions adopted by the Commission on Human
Rights in this regard,
0F
Recalling also all of its relevant resolutions in which, inter alia, it condemned
any State that permitted or tolerated the recruitment, financing, training, assembly,
transit and 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 and the Organization of
African Unity, inter alia, the Organization of African Unity Convention for the
elimination of mercenarism in Africa, 2 as well as by the African Union, 3
1F
2F
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 non-use of force or of the 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 freely to determine their political status and to pursue 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,
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1
See Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-third Session, Supplement No. 53 (A/63/53), chap. II.
United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 1490, No. 25573.
3
On 8 July 2002, the Organization of African Unity ceased to exist and, in its place, the African Union
came into force on 9 July 2002.
2
08-48063