Robert Badinter

Robert Badinter was President of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration within the OSCE from 1995 until 2013. He has been instrumental in the creation of the Convention on Conciliation and Arbitration, adopted at the OSCE Ministerial Council in 1992 in Stockholm.

Born in 1928, Robert Badinter was Minister of Justice of France (1981 – 1986), President of the Constitutional Council (1986 – 1995) and a member of the Senate (1995 – 2011). Among his major achievements as Minister of Justice was the abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Badinter furthermore contributed to the revision of the criminal code and established several measures aimed at reinforcing the rights of individuals and victims.

Badinter has been active in the field of international cooperation. In 1991, he was President of the Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on the former Yugoslavia. Later on, he was actively involved in the creation of the International Criminal Court. In 2002, he had been entrusted by the European Union to participate in the drafting of the treaty establishing a European Constitution. He was also member of the Executive Committee created by former Secretary General Kofi Annan to reform the UN (2003 – 2004). 

Before embracing his political career, Badinter was a lawyer at the Paris Bar (1951 – 1981) and Professor at the Sorbonne Faculty of Law.

Throughout his academic and professional career, Badinter authored various books and articles such as, L'abolition (Fayard, 2000), English Version: Abolition: One Man's Battle Against the Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 2008), L’Exécution (rééd. LGF, 2008), Les Epines et les Roses (Fayard, 2011), and recently Idiss (Fayard, 2018).