The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary has learned with deep sorrow that Ambassador Árpád Prandler, 84, passed away on February 4, 2014. In addition to serving as a diplomat of Hungary, Ambassador Prandler was a university professor in international law and a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Árpád Prandler was active both in the field of public international law and international criminal law. He graduated at the Faculty of Law, ELTE University, Budapest, in 1952, and he was an assistant professor there until 1958.

Mr. Prandler joined the Foreign Service in 1962, and he remained a diplomat until 2005. He served at the Permanent Mission of Hungary to the UN between 1963 and 1968. He was a member of the Hungarian delegation to the UN General Assembly for longer periods (1963-70, 1975-82, 1994-2004).

Mr Prandler was appointed the Head of the International Law Department at the Foreign Ministry in 1974, and he also became the Head of the Hungarian delegation to the Third UN Conference on Law of the Sea in 1974-82.

From 1981 on Judge Prandler had been a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. He also worked as Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs at the UN in 1983-90. In 1990 he was appointed the Secretary-General of the Fourth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 

Judge Prandler had, moreover, established competence and experience in international criminal law and has an extensive knowledge of issues concerning the International Criminal Court (ICC), since in 1998 he was a member of the Hungarian delegation to the preparatory work of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, later Head of the Hungarian delegation to the Preparatory Commission for the ICC. As an ad litem judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, since 2006, he proved to be a person of high moral character, which was further enriched by his widespread professional experience. In 2003 he was elected Chairman of the Sixth Committee (Legal) by the UN General Assembly. Meanwhile, he had been teaching as a professor of international law at various Hungarian universities since 1970.

While performing these prestigious tasks at international organizations, Judge Prandler also worked as a senior advisor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, and he worked again as the Head of the International Law Department between 2000 and 2002. From 2003 on he was the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for revising the Belgrade Convention regarding the regime of navigation of the River Danube until his death.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)