The evolving forms, trends and manifestations of mercenaries and mercenary-related - Report of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination:Report to 75th Session of UN General Assembly (A/75/259)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the present report, the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to selfdetermination examines the evolution of the use of mercenaries and related actors in the light of the considerable changes in the nature of contemporary armed conflicts, and the challenges this creates for the implementation of the relevant international and regional legal frameworks pertaining to mercenaries. The Working Group enumerates a broad range of actors and activities that may be considered mercenary-related and notes that special consideration should be paid to the specific context and conditions in which these actors operate. In the report, the Working Group highlights the impact of current and emerging manifestations of mercenaries and related actors on the enjoyment of human rights. In some cases, these actors have allegedly committed violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses. In other cases, their use has contributed to the intensification and prolongation of hostilities and therefore to the human suffering borne by the civilian population. Their activities may also undermine the right of peoples to self-determination, including in non-conflict settings. The Working Group sheds light on the pervasive secrecy and opacity surrounding mercenary and mercenary-related activities, which is particularly stark when such actors are employed as an instrument to remotely influence armed conflicts, while their patrons, including States, deny involvement and seek to avoid legal responsibilities. These dimensions represent a major obstacle to holding the perpetrators of violations and abuses accountable and providing victims with effective remedies, thus enabling perpetrators and those directing their actions to operate with impunity. The report concludes with a call for urgent attention by States and other stakeholders to the new forms and manifestations of mercenary-related activities and sets out recommendations to stimulate thinking and discussion on ways to counter mercenary and mercenary-related activities more effectively. During the preparation of the present report, the Working Group was composed of Chris Kwaja (Chair), Jelena Aparac, Lilian Bobea, Sorcha MacLeod and Saeed Mokbil.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".