Enrique Martín Bernales Ballesteros (6 November 1940, in Lima – 24 November 2018) [1] was a Peruvian scholar and politician. He was a member of the Peruvian Senate and the first UN Special Rapporteur on mercenaries.
Bernales Ballesteros served as Principal Professor of Social Sciences at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). [2] He also served as the general secretary of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR). [2] [3]
Bernales Ballesteros was the son of Luis E. Bernales (director of Colegio Guadalupe) and Laura Ballesteros. [2] [4] Whilst his family was relatively wealthy, he grew up in the Barrios Altos. [4] He went to school at Colegio La Salle for his primary and secondary education. He studied law at PUCP and Political Science at the University of Grenoble. [2] [5] During his three years as a student in Europe, he was molded in socialist thought. [4] He obtained a degree in political science and a doctorate in law. [2] In 1971 he was elected Dean of the Political Science faculty at PUCP. In 1975 he studied Methodology of Historical Investigation at universities in Paris, London and Madrid. [5]
He was elected as a senator, standing as a United Left (IU) candidate. [2] In the 1985 election he was elected with 111,808 votes. [6] At the time, he was called the 'Gentleman of the Peruvian Left'. He led the left-wing faction in parliament. [4]
Between 1987 and 2004 he served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the question of the use of mercenaries. [7] [8] He was the first person to hold this post. In 2004 he was replaced by Shaista Shameem, who adopted a more conciliatory approach to the private security industry that Bernales Ballesteros. The post was abolished the following year. [9] As of 1996 [update] he was the chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. [10]