History

24 years before the founding of FIDH, in the intellectual, radical tumult of France’s Dreyfus Affair.

In the camp of the so-called Dreyfusards, who believed in the innocence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, were Senator Ludovic Trarieux, Victor Basch and Francis de Pressensé, who, along with others, created the French League for the Defence of Human Rights. It was an immediate success. My ancestors, who had a strong sense of justice, joined without hesitation!

In 1918, Europe emerged from the bloodiest conflict in its history. Brought to its knees. A whole generation of men and women is forever marked. Those who were not killed at the warfront came back with visible or invisible wounds from which they would, in some cases, never recover.

Two words echoed across the continent: “Never again.” The national human rights leagues of some 20 countries came together and created FIDH on the 28 of May 1922 in Paris – around an idea and a motto: Peace through human rights.

And thus the first major international human rights organisation was born.

It also called for the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court. In my great-grandparents’ home, between the two wars, we demonstrated, distributed leaflets, and attended pacifist conferences and events. Despite this activism, the slope leading to the abyss was too steep.

At the end of the 1930s, the world was once again engulfed in flames and plunged into the World War II.

Forged paper printing was working at full speed while the evacuation or hiding place networks for Jews and other members of the Resistance were set up. Whenever they were dismantled, they quickly regrouped. FIDH was forced underground. Many Jewish members were forced into exile.

In 1944, everyone was struck by terrible news.

In January 1944, the president of the French League for Human Rights, Victor Basch, and his wife Ilona –both great figures of the movement– were arrested in Caluire-et-Cuir, in the Lyon region, and executed by the collaborationist Vichy regime’s militia.

This, however, did not stop my great-grandparents. Their activities continued with tenfold determination until Liberation. This heritage continues to underpin my family’s philosophy to this day.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was finally adopted by the United Nations General Assembly under the guidance of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Today, 10 December is still a date celebrated throughout the world!

René Cassin, a former member of the Resistance and a companion of the Free French Forces, was one of the main architects of this declaration. And one of the great figures of FIDH.

In 1948, the UN is still in its infancy. But founded by people who were marked by the catastrophe of the Second World War, the genocide of Jews, Roma, LGBTI individuals and others, war crimes and the massacres of civilians, it already represents a major step forward in the history of humanity.

The declaration’s preamble establishes universal dignity and equal rights as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This preamble is inalienable and cannot be changed.

This groundbreaking text is composed of 30 articles, each one remarkably simple.

Translated into more than 500 languages, this document is, unfortunately, flouted every day. Yet it remains, more than ever, for each of us, a source of inspiration in the struggle for universal human rights.

Click here to engage with this fundamental text.

He and his colleagues denounced what they observed first-hand: repression of popular revolt by the communist regime which did not hesitate to shoot into a crowd of demonstrators demanding better wages.

The trial in Poznań is emblematic for several reasons. It occurred in the wake of the Budapest revolt, following the period of de-Stalinization. While Kruchtev’s reforms gave a relative breath of fresh air to the citizens of the Warsaw Pact countries, the repression of the events in Poznań marked a real throw back in terms of freedom of speech. Without the observers attending the trial, the world would not have known about it.

In the 1960s and 1970s, my family was at the heart of the first major missions of FIDH. From Latin America to Greece, there was no shortage of great causes. Terrible military dictatorships massacred, tortured and imprisoned with impunity. FIDH was present to observe, document, investigate, and follow the trials closely. This has become its trademark.

In Paris, where Greek, Chilean, and Hungarian exiles lived side by side, my mother from Salonika (my first name, Milo, owes a lot to my mother) and my father, who comes from this humanist family tradition, met during demonstrations denouncing the coup de force in Prague.

In the 1980s, this enlargement movement grew and many associations independent of FIDH decided to join in a universalist ideal. Against this effervescent backdrop, I would soon make my grand entrance – an eighties baby.

My parents –active volunteers within the Federation– were convinced: FIDH’s documentation reports must get into the hands of the world’s decision-makers. They must be read. To bring about true change for the victims of violations. A new lever of action for FIDH was emerging: advocacy. That is, to plead the cause of human rights and to denounce the violations observed throughout the world to the major international institutions. FIDH is now recognized as a serious interlocutor of the UN, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

With the fall of the Wall, the Iron Curtain finally fell: the Cold War was over. Civil society organisations came out of hiding. Others were born, such as Memorial in Russia – a member of FIDH since 2016 – which seeks to shed light on the countless victims of the Gulag while defending human rights. In this turbulent yet exciting context of change and transition, FIDH played its part, ushering the movement towards the opening up of these societies. The FIDH “family” thus expanded, with new cousins the world over. Добро пожаловать! (Welcome!)

A few months before the outbreak of the genocide in Rwanda in April 1994, FIDH carried out a fact-finding mission in the country and came back with a report sounding the alarm about the genocide. The same kind of activism was used in the Balkan wars. The decade of the 1990s saw FIDH’s powerful voice grow stronger to shed light on violations.

When the conditions of independence or impartiality are not met before a country’s national courts, FIDH’s Litigation Action Group endeavours to bring the voice of victims before regional courts, specially created courts and, as a last resort, before the ICC.

This was the case with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda or that perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. In both cases, FIDH supported victims more than 15 years later to obtain justice.

As a law student, I did an internship as part of the FIDH team that supported 20 Cambodian civil parties living in France before the special tribunal set up in Phnom Penh in July 2006. When two of the main Khmer Rouge leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in 2014, I was overjoyed and fully grasped the power of the law. I bore witness to the power of FIDH’s patience and tenacity.

Rwanda, Cambodia, Augusto Pinochet in Chile: since these first emblematic cases, FIDH has never stopped standing by the victims of serious crimes. The war in Syria is one such horror. FIDH, alongside its Syrian member organisation Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), has been working since 2012 to initiate legal proceedings against criminals from all sides of the Syrian civil war. Against the foreign jihadists who have subjected Yazidi women and children to sexual slavery. Against the regime of Bashar El Assad which imprisons, tortures and executes. Against the Russian mercenaries of the Wagner units sent by Vladimir Putin to Syria to commit heinous crimes. FIDH is investigating, documenting, and filing complaints.

While FIDH has been denouncing Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian drift in Russia for years, the war in Ukraine, which entered a phase of direct and intense aggression in February 2022, has further galvanised the Federation. Here again, as for the past 100 years, it is a matter of standing by those whose human rights are being trampled on. To participate in the effort to document the crimes and massacres committed. Because soon –and FIDH will see to it–, the perpetrators of these massacres will have to answer for them.

As a future criminal lawyer, this is the core of what I do and what I stand for. And I will pass on to my children the same thirst for justice and equality: principles that are dear to my family – and to the human rights defenders who are part of FIDH today.