René Cassin
- This article is about the person named René Cassin; for the human-rights group named after him, see CCJO René Cassin.
René Samuel Cassin (5 October 1887 – 20 February 1976) was a French jurist, law professor and judge. A French soldier in World War I, he later went on to form the Union Federale, 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.
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), in 1918, for instance, founding the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans 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 Right from a Jewish perspective.
