Olivier de Frouville

Olivier de Frouville is a Professor of Public Law at the Panthéon-Assas University and Director of the Paris Human Rights Center (C.R.D.H.). He is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France, undertaking a programme of research called ‘On a democratic theory of International Law’. His fields of research cover mainly general international law, the theory of international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.

Professor de Frouville has been invited to teach at many universities in France and abroad. In 2011-2012 he was a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Center for International Law and at Clare Hall, a College of Cambridge University. In 2013, he was elected into life membership of the College.

Parallel to his academic career, Olivier de Frouville has worked for more than twenty years as a human rights expert in the United Nations (UN). He is a member and the Chair of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee (2015-2018) and of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (2008-2014), of which he was the Chair-Rapporteur between April 2012 and October 2013. He was also a member of the Coordination Committee of UN Special Procedures in 2013-2014.

Between 2009 and 2014 he has been a member of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights in France. Since 2009, he has been an expert appointed by France in the framework of the OSCE Human Dimension Moscow mechanism. As Special Envoy of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), Olivier de Frouville has represented this organisation during the negotiations of the Declaration on human rights defenders (1995-1998) and of the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances (2003-2006).