Important personalitiesBack

René Samuel Cassin (born 5 October 1887 in Bayonne, France; died 20 February 1976 in Paris, France) was a French jurist, law professor and judge. The son of a French-Jewish merchant, he served as a soldier in World War I, and later went on to form the Union Fédérale, a leftist, pacifist Veterans organisation. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968 for his work in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. That same year, he was also awarded one of the UN's own Human Rights Prizes. René Cassin founded the French Institute of Administrative Sciences (IFSA) which was recognized as a public utility association.


League of Nations

As French delegate to the League of Nations from 1924 to 1938, Cassin pressed for progress on disarmament and in developing institutions to aid the resolution of international conflicts.


Human rights and NGOs

Working from a draft composed by Canadian scholar and professor of law, John Humphrey, he reduced the draft from 46 basic articles to 44. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as eventually adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December contained 30 human rights articles from the original draft.

He served on the UN's Human Rights Commission and the Hague Court of Arbitration.

He was also a member (1959–1965) and president (1965–1968) of the European Court of Human Rights. Today the court building is on the Rue René Cassin in Strasbourg.

Cassin also headed many Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO), founding the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans in 1918 and until 1940 serving as its President and then Honorary President. In 1945, de Gaulle suggested Cassin, having done so much for the French people, also do something to help the Jewish people. Cassin turned to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, and, together with the American Jewish Committee and the Anglo-Jewish Association, founded the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations, dedicated to providing encouragement from a Jewish perspective to the nascent UN human rights system. In 2001, CCJO René Cassin was founded to promote Universal Human Rights from a Jewish perspective. As the head of the Alliance Israélite in France, he pursued civil rights for the Jews and was an active Zionist. A high school in Jerusalem is named after him.

In 1987, his Cassin's remains were enshrined in the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris.

In 2000 the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations (CCJO) took a group of young professionals to the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights (which has since been reformed into the Human Rights Council) in Geneva where they were dismayed by the absence of a Jewish voice on universal human rights. They were inspired to set up CCJO René Cassin, in the name of Monsieur René Cassin, to provide a Jewish voice on international human rights.


French Institute of Administrative Sciences

In 1947, René Cassin created the French Institute of Administrative Sciences (IFSA) which was recognized of public utility. He was the first president of this association which organized many conferences that helped to develop the French doctrine in administrative law.