The death of Régis de Gouttes on February 15, 2024 is a new loss for the René Cassin Foundation. For us, he was a loyal and endearing friend, always available, benevolent, warm and wise, of elegant discretion and discreet elegance. After many years as a member of the International Institute of Human Rights, he agreed to join the Honorary Committee of our Foundation. Born in 1940 in Palleville, in the Tarn region, in the heart of the Lauragais, he studied law and political science in Toulouse, before graduating top of his class from the Centre national d’études judiciaires in Bordeaux, the forerunner of the ENM. He pursued a distinguished career as a senior magistrate, alternating between responsibilities at the Chancellery and secondments to the Quai d’Orsay, until his appointment as Advocate General at the Court of Paris and then as First Advocate General of the Court of Cassation from 2000, following in the footsteps of Louis Joinet. In this position, which was still “unique”, he was called upon to deliver conclusions in sensitive cases such as the criminal status of the Head of State. Likewise, he did not hesitate to take a public stand with President André Braunschweig, deploring the case law of the Cour de cassation, which had initially denied the direct applicability of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. He played a very active role in ensuring that the Cour de cassation took international law into account, and in particular the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, and made a constant contribution to the dialogue between judges, and more generally to training and informing the judicial world, with very detailed analyses of “le juge français et la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme: avancées et résistance”(RTDH,1995/605). It was as Deputy Director of the Legal Affairs Department of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1985 to 1989 that he took his first steps in Strasbourg, arguing several cases on behalf of France before the Commission on Human Rights, and sitting on the Steering Committee on Criminal Policy (CD-PC) and the Steering Committee on Human Rights (CD-DH), which he was to chair in 1995-1996, at a crucial period marking the genesis of Protocol No. 11 to the Convention. Because of his age and experience, he was the natural candidate of the Cour de cassation for election to the new Court of Human Rights in 1998, overcoming his disappointment with great courtesy and saluting “his great friend Jean-Paul Costa” on numerous occasions, notably during the publication of Mélanges en l’honneur de Jean-Paul Costa (Dalloz 2011). In 1990, Régis de Gouttes was elected as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a position he held until 2014, with great attention to others, drawing up an assessment of his experience in a very substantial study entitled “Regards portés sur vingt-cinq années passées au CERD”(Droit fondamentaux n°15, 2013). This international commitment continued with his participation as an expert in the work of the CNCDH until 2018, where he chaired the sub-commission on the fight against racism and made a major contribution to the work of the sub-commission on European and international issues, as well as sitting on the HALDE’s scientific council.

In 2014, he returned to Strasbourg as a French member of the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), with the same strength of conviction, still recently drawing a parallel between his international experiences, with comparative views on CERD and ECRI”(RTDH 2020/629). In all these diverse roles, carried out with integrity, legal rigor and diplomatic prudence, he acquired great moral influence, earning the friendship and respect of all. The René Cassin Foundation sends its sincere condolences to his wife and children.