Marc Baron Bossuyt, doctor of laws (Ghent), docteur ès sciences politiques (Geneva), doctor honoris causa (Hasselt), is emeritus professor of International Law of the University of Antwerp. He has been visiting professor in California, Burundi, Rwanda and Taiwan and Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (South-Africa).

At the United Nations, he has been Chairperson of the UN Commission and the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights. At present, he is a Member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He was sent on human rights missions to Suriname, Mauritania, Slovakia and Hungary and on the death penalty to Suriname, Guyana, the Philippines and Uganda.

In Belgium, he was been Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons and successively Judge and President of the Constitutional Court. He received the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown and is Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold II.

He is the author of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, adopted on 15 December 1989 by the UN General Assembly, of a Guide to the ‘travaux préparatoires’ of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Dordrecht, Nijhoff, 1987, 851 p.) and of International Human Rights Protection: Balanced, Critical Realistic (Antwerp-Cambridge, Intersentia, 2016, 231 p.).