Frederik van Asbeck

Nationality

Netherlands

Date of Birth

1889

Date of Death

1968

Political
Preference

Frederick Mari baron van Asbeck was a Dutch lawyer and professor. After studying law and political science at Lausanne and Leiden, van Asbeck worked as a civil servant in the Dutch East Indies from 1919 to 1933 and returned to The Netherlands in 1934 and lectured on colonial constitutional law in Leiden. In 1935, he was appointed as a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission at the League of Nations.

After World War II, van Asbeck continued to teach on colonial law and always defended internationalist views and interests. In line with this, he served as a member of the Committee of Experts of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, among other positions. A Dutch Protestant, van Asbeck was president of the World Council of Churches’ Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), an international ecumenical movement, from 1948 to 1954. Van Asbeck saw the individual man as an object of protection and someone who carries international rights and obligations, as well as a man independently exercising a public function internationally, and not merely as a representative of his nation. His vision of man’s place in law and society was also informed by his Protestant beliefs in the independence of mind and a sense of individual responsibility.

Van Asbeck participated in the first General Assembly of the United Nations as a member of the Dutch delegation in 1946.