- Person
- René Cassin
- Lived
- 1887–1976
- Field
- Human rights law
- From
- French
The story
Among the cruellest legacies of the First World War were the children it left without parents. In France these children were known as pupilles de la nation, wards of the nation, and the state took on a duty to protect and support them.
René Cassin knew the cost of the war at first hand. Born in Bayonne in 1887, he was mobilised in 1914 and gravely wounded by machine-gun fire at Saint-Mihiel on 12 October that year. He received the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille militaire, but his injuries ended his military service and caused him pain for the rest of his life. He returned to teaching law, first at Aix-en-Provence and later at Lille and Paris, and turned his experience into service for others who had suffered.
He brought legal expertise to the cause of war victims. In the 1920s he published a study of the case law on war pensions and on the adoption of wards of the nation. To benefit children orphaned by the war, he accepted the office of vice-president of the Conseil supérieur des pupilles de la nation, the High Council for Wards of the Nation, a post that the Ordre de la Libération and France's Ministry of the Armed Forces both date to 1929, the year he became a law professor in Paris.
It was one of several practical ways he worked for war victims. In 1918 he founded the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans, which he served as president or honorary president until 1940, and from 1922 he was president of the Union fédérale des Mutilés et Veuves de Guerre, which represented disabled veterans and war widows. In 1926 he founded the International Conference of Associations of Disabled War Veterans, serving as its permanent reporter until the Second World War. Until 1940 he also won the passage of several laws for war victims. The Nobel Committee described these as practical outlets he devised for his humanitarian instincts after the war.
This early work on behalf of widows, orphans and the disabled helped shape the rest of his life. The jurist who fought for war orphans in the 1920s went on to become the person most responsible for drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which sets out rights belonging to every person in the world.
Why it matters
Cassin's work on behalf of war orphans helped ensure that children who lost parents in the war received the protection the nation had promised them.
About René Cassin
French-Jewish jurist, war-wounded veteran and Free French lawyer who was a principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Nobel Peace Prize 1968.
More about René Cassin
- René Cassin helped rebuild French law after liberationRené Cassin was vice-president of France's Council of State from 1944 to 1960, chaired the committee preparing the 1958 constitution and sat on the Constitutional Council.
- René Cassin used his Nobel money for human rightsRené Cassin used the money from his 1968 Nobel Peace Prize to found the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 1969.
- René Cassin helped write the Declaration of Human RightsFrench jurist René Cassin was a principal drafter of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, later presided over the European Court of Human Rights and won the 1968 Nobel Peace Prize.
- René Cassin won laws to help disabled veteransBadly wounded in the First World War, René Cassin drafted and won passage of French laws to help war victims find work, and in 1930 secured the law on the combatant’s pension.
Sources
- René Cassin: Biographical NobelPrize.org
- René Cassin Ordre de la Libération
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.