- Person
- René Cassin
- Lived
- 1887–1976
- Field
- Human rights law
- From
- French
The story
René Cassin was born in Bayonne in 1887 to a Sephardi Jewish family. Seriously wounded as a soldier in the First World War, he turned his experience into service: in 1918 he founded the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans, and in 1926 an international conference of disabled veterans' associations. A professor of law in Paris, he represented France at the League of Nations from 1924 to 1938. In June 1940 he answered Charles de Gaulle's appeal and joined him in London, using his legal skills to build the Free French movement.
After the war Cassin was a member of the new UN Commission on Human Rights from its creation in 1946, serving as vice-chairman under Eleanor Roosevelt's chairmanship. He belonged to the small group charged with drafting a declaration of rights. Working from a list of rights prepared by the Canadian law professor John Humphrey, Cassin produced a revised draft and expanded the text. The Nobel Committee described him as the workhorse of the Commission and the person most responsible for the draft.
His influence showed in key choices. Cassin argued that the Declaration should be called "universal" rather than "international", and he helped secure recognition of economic, social and cultural rights as fundamental rights. The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris on 10 December 1948.
Cassin went on to serve as a member and then, from 1965 to 1968, as president of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and he chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights from 1955 to 1957. In 1968, the twentieth anniversary of the Declaration, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, and the same year he was awarded one of the UN General Assembly's Human Rights Prizes. He used the Nobel money to found the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Cassin also led the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which ran schools for Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa.
The Declaration he helped write is the foundation of modern human rights law. It prepared the ground for the binding human rights covenants whose drafting Cassin analysed in his 1951 lectures at The Hague Academy of International Law, and the date of its adoption, 10 December, is marked each year as Human Rights Day.
Why it matters
The Universal Declaration Cassin helped draft is the foundation of modern human rights law and has been translated into hundreds of languages.
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 worked to protect France's war orphansRené Cassin served as vice-president of France's High Council for Wards of the Nation, which looked after children orphaned by the First World War.
- 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 Nobel Prize
- René Cassin Wikipedia
- René Cassin Les Chemins de la Mémoire, French Ministry of the Armed Forces
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