José Ayala Lasso

José Ayala Lasso ( born January 29, 1932 in Quito ) is an Ecuadorian lawyer, diplomat and politician in retirement. He was the first High Commissioner of the United Nations for human rights of 1994 until 1997.

From 1977 to 1979 he was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, as well as ambassador to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, EC, at the Vatican, and Peru. From 1997 to 2000 he was again Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador and led urgent border negotiations with Peru, to prevent war. A boundary agreement was signed between Ecuador and Peru in 1998.

As High Commissioner for Human Rights, he first had to set priorities and establish the credibility of his office. As soon as he was High Commissioner on 5 April 1994 that the Rwandan genocide began. He has gone there several times and the General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Commission reported in detail. He has expanded the activities of the UN Centre for Human Rights to discuss the human rights not only in the conference rooms of the UN in Geneva, but to bring to the man, anywhere in the world. That is why he has opened 26 offices in all regions of the world. He sat down once and for all victims of injustice and arbitrariness, especially victims of genocide and so-called ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Cambodia, Colombia and Yugoslavia. He did not forget the so-called politically "incorrect " victims. His greeting to the German expellees on 28 May 1995 in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt am Main ( "50 years of expulsion" ) and his speech to the German expellees in Berlin on August 6, 2005 ( "60 years of expulsion" ), in the presence of chancellor Angela Merkel and Minister of the Interior Otto Schily, attracted attention in the media and academia. Under his leadership, a major conference on expulsion and International Law was held in March 1997 in Geneva. From the report by the Special Rapporteur Awn Shawkat Al Khasawneh "The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfers " ( UN Doc E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/23 ) was born.