Ricardo Joaquín Alfaro Jované

Ricardo Alfaro Jované, 1922

Ricardo Joaquín Alfaro Jované (born August 20, 1882 in Panama City , † February 20, 1971 ibid) was a lawyer , politician and diplomat from Panama . He served as President of his home country in 1931/1932 and as a judge at the International Court of Justice from 1959 to 1964 , including Vice-President of the Court from 1961 to 1964. His diplomatic and legal work focused on human rights and the peaceful settlement of international conflicts.

Life

Ricardo Alfaro was born in Panama City in 1882 and before his studies, which he graduated from the Universidad de Cartagena in Cartagena in 1904 , worked in various other professions such as railroad worker , secretary , paramedic and translator as well as in the theater and as a newspaper clerk. From 1905 he worked in the diplomatic service of his home country. In addition to the field of law and political science , in which he received his doctorate in 1918 , he studied linguistics and literary studies , later he was also active as a writer and wrote historical works.

After the end of the First World War he was head of the Panamanian delegation in negotiations with the United States on the status of the Panama Canal , and from 1920 to 1921 he served as the country's foreign minister. He then worked from 1922 to 1930 and again from 1933 to 1936 as Plenipotentiary Envoy to the United States. After he had also been Vice President of the country from 1928, he served as the 15th President of Panama from January 16, 1931 to June 5, 1932, succeeding Florencio Harmodio Arosemena, after being appointed by the Supreme Court . In this position he was succeeded by Harmodio Arias Madrid . After the Second World War , Ricardo Alfaro headed the delegation from his home country to the founding conference of the United Nations (UN) in San Francisco in 1945 . A year later he was again foreign minister, but in 1947 he resigned from this office in protest of a planned agreement with the United States regarding the Panama Canal.

During the founding conference of the UN he was one of the most active delegates. In addition to working on the Spanish version of the Charter of the United Nations , a focus of his work was the establishment of a "declaration of the rights and obligations of states" for the peaceful settlement of international relations and a “Declaration of Essential Human Rights” in the UN Charter. After unsuccessful in this regard, however, he submitted the draft declaration of human rights again as a proposal at the first General Assembly of the United Nations . In 1947 he finally submitted it to the newly formed UN Human Rights Commission , of which he was also a member. The draft ultimately formed an essential basis for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted a year later .

In 1946 he was the first signatory of resolution 96 (I) proposed by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin of the UN General Assembly, which formed the basis of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide , which emerged two years later . From 1949 to 1953 he was a member of the United Nations International Law Commission. In 1959 he taught as a lecturer at the Hague Academy for International Law . In the same year, at the age of 76, he was elected judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague , and from 1961 to 1964 he was vice-president of the court. In 1964 he retired from the judge's office for reasons of age.

Ricardo Alfaro belonged to the Institut de Droit international from 1954 and was an honorary member of the American Society for International Law from 1966 . He was married with three sons and two daughters and died in 1971 in his hometown.

Works (selection)

• Vida del General Tomás Herrera. Barcelona 1909
• Carabobo: Narración Histórica. Panama 1921
• The Rights and Duties of States. Series: Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law. Volume 97. The Hague 1960

literature

• Lawrence O. Ealy: Alfaro, Ricardo Joaquin. In: Warren F. Kuehl (Ed.): Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists. Greenwood Press, Westport 1983, ISBN 0-313-22129-4 , pp. 11/12

Web links

• Rainer Huhle: Ricardo J. Alfaro (1882 - 1971) Panama Information from the Nuremberg Human Rights Center