On Wednesday, 17th March at 12 noon, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) will inaugurate the Frédéric Passy Archive Centre, in honour of the French parliamentarian and pacifist who was one of the two co-founders of the IPU and first Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in 1901, along with the founder of the International Red Cross, Henry Dunant of Switzerland. The inauguration will take place in the presence of the Executive President of the French IPU Group, Senator Robert Del Picchia, and the Ambassador of France to the international organisations in Geneva, Mr. Bernard Kessedjian.

The Frédéric Passy Archive Centre, an annex of the House of Parliaments, was restored with the support of the French Parliament, which donated 150,000 Euros for the renovation of the building.

In Paix1901-1925 – Conférence des Prix Nobel, Frédéric W. Haberman recounts that Frédéric Passy was born in Paris on 20 May 1822, where he lived until his death, at the age of 90, on 12 June 1912. After training as a lawyer, at the age of 22 Passy became an accountant at the State Council, which he left after three years in order to study economics. He became a convinced supporter of free trade, which - he believed - could unite nations in joint endeavours, bring about disarmament and put an end to war. In 1877 he was elected to the Academy of Ethics and Political Science, a branch of the Institut de France.

In 1867, building on his campaign to prevent war between France and Prussia over the question of Luxembourg, he founded the "International and Permanent League for Peace". When this League was swept away by the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71), he reorganised it under the title of "French Society of Friends of Peace" which in turn lead to the birth in 1889 of the "French Society for Arbitration among Nations",. Passy was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1881, re-elected in 1885 and defeated in 1889. In the Chamber, he passed a number of labour laws, in particular a law on accidents at work, opposed the government’s colonial policy, drew up a project for disarmament and tabled a motion advocating arbitration in international conflicts.

"His parliamentary work to promote arbitration was boosted by the success of Randal Cremer who sponsored a motion in the British Parliament stipulating that England and the United States of America should resort to arbitration in any conflict between them that could not be settled through normal diplomatic channels", writes Haberman. In 1888, Cremer led a delegation of nine British MPs which met a delegation of 24 French MPs in Paris, headed by Passy, to discuss arbitration and the lay the foundations of an organisation devoted to promoting acceptance of the idea. The following year, 56 French MPs, 28 British MPs and representatives of the Parliaments of Italy, Spain, Denmark, Hungary, Belgium and the United States founded the Inter-Parliamentary Union, with a three-member presidency that included Passy. The Union then set up a bureau to act as a centre for intellectual debate and promoted the formation of national parliamentary groups seeking to enact laws in favour of peace, particularly through arbitration. Frédéric Passy published his book Pour la paix (1909) at the age of 87.