The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary has learned with deep sorrow that Professor Gáspár Bíró, PhD., former UN Special Rapporteur and professor at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest passed away at the age of 56.
Professor Bíró was born in 1958 in Tinca, Romania. He attended high school in Timisoara and acquired a law degree in 1982 at the Faculty of Law of Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. In the following years he practiced law in Târgu Secuiesc and Brașov. In 1988 he became a Senior Fellow at the Bibó István College for Advanced Studies of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, Hungary. At the same time, he also started holding lectures at the ELTE Faculty of Law. Between 1989 and 1991 Bíró was a senior government official of the Republic of Hungary.
In 1991 he was appointed to participate as an expert in the United Nations working group preparing the Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. Between 1992 and 1994 he was a member of the Committee of Experts for the Protection of National Minorities at the Council of Europe. From 1992 until 1998 he was appointed an Independent Expert and later Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Sudan. His uncompromising reports received significant attention worldwide. In 1995 Bíró received an award from the Government of the Republic of Hungary "for his minority protection activities and for preparing the basic concept of the Act on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities."
From 1998 to 2004, and later from 2008 to 2012 he was acting as an Expert of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities at the Council of Europe. Between 2004 and 2006 he served as a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
Bíró was conferred the title Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) of Political Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1997. In 2004 he became a professor at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. As a visiting professor, he held numerous lectures at universities ranging from Sri Lanka to Skopje, Macedonia.
Professor Bíró is the author of many studies and three books in Hungarian: ‘Az identitásválasztás szabadsága’ (The Free Choice of Identity), ‘Bevezetés a nemzetközi politikai viszonyok tanulmányozásába’ (Introduction to the Study of International Political Relations), and ‘Demokrácia és önrendelkezés a 21. század elején’ (Democracy and Self-Determination at the Beginning of the 21st century).
He is survived by his wife and two sons.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)