United Nations A/RES/59/178 General Assembly Distr.: General 3 March 2005 Fifty-ninth session Agenda item 104 Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 20 December 2004 [on the report of the Third Committee (A/59/502)] 59/178. 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 its resolution 58/162 of 22 December 2003, and taking note of Commission on Human Rights resolution 2004/5 of 8 April 2004, 1 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 the African Union, 3 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, _______________ 1 See Official Records of the Economic and Social Council, 2004, Supplement No. 3 (E/2004/23), chap. II, sect. A. 2 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. 04-48694