Mohammed Bedjaoui

Mohammed Bedjaoui (born  September 21, 1929 in Sidi bel Abbès ) is an Algerian lawyer , diplomat and politician . He was Minister of Justice from 1964 to 1970, President of the Constitutional Court from 2002 to 2005 and Foreign Minister of his home country from 2005 to 2007. From 1982 to 2001 he worked as a judge and from 1994 to 1997 as President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague .

Life

Mohammed Bedjaoui studied at the University of Grenoble , where he obtained a diploma from the Institute for Political Studies in 1952 and a doctorate in law in 1955 , and was a lawyer in France from 1951 to 1953 and then at the Center national de la recherche scientifique until 1956 (CNRS). During the Algerian War, he worked from 1956 to 1962 as legal advisor to the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), which fought for Algeria's independence from France. During the 1961-1962 negotiations on the Evian Agreement, with which France recognized Algeria's right to self-determination, Mohammed Bedjaoui was a member of the Algerian delegation.

After Algeria gained independence at the end of the war, he was Secretary General of the Government from 1962 and Minister of Justice from 1964 to 1970 . At the same time he worked from 1964 to 1965 as dean of the law and economics faculty at the University of Algiers . He then represented his country as ambassador to France until 1979 and from 1971 also to UNESCO , before becoming permanent representative of Algeria to the United Nations (UN). There he held a large number of positions, for example he was Co-President of a UN Commission of Inquiry into Iran and Vice-President of the Namibia Council of the United Nations, and he was also a member and head of the delegation from his home country to the General Assembly of the United Nations . In addition, he was a member of the International Law Commission from 1965 and was President of the Group of 77 from 1981 .

He held these positions until his election as judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1982, where he succeeded the Egyptian judge Abdullah Ali El-Erian , who died in office in December 1981. He worked at the IGH until 2001, during which time he was President of the Court from 1994 to 1997. After retiring from the International Court of Justice, where he later served as ad hoc judge in three cases, he was President of the Conseil constitutionnel , the Algerian constitutional court, from 2002 to 2005 . From 2005 to 2007 he took over the post of foreign minister in his home country as part of a cabinet reshuffle .

Mohammed Bedjaoui has been awarded honorary doctorates by various universities . Since 1979 he has been commander and since 2005 Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor . For his services he was awarded the Ordre du Mérite Alaouite in Morocco in 1963 and the Ordre de la Résistance in Algeria in 1984 and 2004 . He has been a member of the Institut de Droit international since 1977 and is also a member of the French Society for International Law and the Scientific Council at the Institute for Marine Affairs in Monaco .

Mohammed Bedjaoui is married and has two daughters.

Works (selection)

• Fonction publique internationale et influences nationales. London, Paris and New York 1958
• La Révolution algérienne et le Droit. English and French edition Brussels 1962, Arabic edition Damascus 1963
• Traités et conventions de l'Algérie. Three volumes. Algiers 1963/1964

literature

• Mohammed Bedjaoui. In: Arthur Eyffinger, Arthur Witteveen, Mohammed Bedjaoui: La Cour internationale de Justice 1946–1996. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague and London 1999, ISBN 9-04-110468-2 , p. 269.