René Blattmann

René Blattmann Bauer (born  January 28, 1948 in La Paz ) is a Bolivian lawyer . From 1973 to 1980 he worked as a professor at the University Mayor de San Andrés and from 1990 to 1994 at the Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo . From 1994 to 1997 he served as Minister for Justice and Human Rights in his home country, during which time he carried out a comprehensive modernization of the Bolivian legal system . From the beginning of 2003 he worked as a judge at the International Criminal Court , where he also held the office of Vice-President from 2006 to 2009. Since April 2013 René Blattmann has held a visiting professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Life

René Blattmann was in 1948 in La Paz was born and gained at the local German school, the High School . From 1966 to 1972 he studied law at the University of Basel . After further comparative studies in Strasbourg and Pescara , he opened a law firm in his home country in 1975. In addition, he taught criminal law and comparative law at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés as a professor from 1973 to 1980 and criminal law at the Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo from 1990 to 1994 . He graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1980 with a degree in American and international law .

From 1994 to 1997 he served in the government of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada as the first Minister for Justice and Human Rights in the history of Bolivia. In this role he initiated fundamental reforms of the legal system and in particular a systematization and modernization of the country's criminal law as well as a strengthening of the protection of human and civil rights . The measures he implemented included, for example, the abolition of the debt tower , restrictions on custodial sentences for minors and the elderly, reducing the number of prisoners on remand through the possibility of bail, and the introduction of legal guarantees against undue delays in criminal proceedings and mobile public defense lawyers in rural areas Regions. In June 2002 he ran for the left-centrist party Movimiento Ciudadano para el Cambio (Citizens' Movement for Change), which emerged in 2001 as a split from the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario , in the Bolivian presidential elections. With less than one percent of the vote, however, he only achieved the penultimate place among eleven candidates.

In February 2003, after being nominated by the Bolivian government, he was elected judge at the newly established International Criminal Court in The Hague . He was elected via the nomination list B for candidates with proven competence in the field of international law for a term of six years. He was attached to the Trial Division of the Court of Justice and also served as one of the General Court's two Vice-Presidents from 2006 to 2009. As a judge in the Trial Chamber, he participated in the Court's first trial against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo . His term of office ended with the conclusion of the first-instance proceedings in 2012.

Awards

In addition to various national honors, René Blattmann received the “Monseñor Leonidas Proaño” prize from the Asociación Latinoamericana para los Derechos Humanos (Latin American Association for Human Rights) in 1995 , the Carl Bertelsmann Prize from the Bertelsmann Foundation in 2001 and the Federal Cross of Merit in 2005 . In addition, the University of Basel (1998) and the Humboldt University of Berlin (2010) awarded him honorary doctorates .

literature

• Blattmann, René (Bolivia). In: Election of the Judges of the International Criminal Court. Addendum: Alphabetical List of Candidates (with Statements of Qualifications). Document no. ICC-ASP / 1/4 / Add.1. Published by the Assembly of the Parties to the International Criminal Court, 2002, pp. 3–7

Web links

• International Criminal Court: Judge René Blattmann (Bolivia) (English, with picture)