Claire Hédon, Defender of Rights
After acting as President of the ATD Fourth World movement for five years, Claire Hédon has been Defender of Rights since 22 July 2020. Appointed to this post for 6 years, she is particularly committed to the defence and promotion of children's rights.
Updated on 28/09/2021
5 min
After a Master's degree in law and a diploma from CELSA, Claire Hédon joined Radio Bleu in 1987, before taking her first steps at RFI with the programme Les Unes et les autres. In 2003, she became presenter of Priorité Santé, a daily programme that attracts nearly 4 million listeners in French-speaking Africa. The show combines utilitarianism and education to reach its audience about prevention in the fields of female sexuality, AIDS and malaria.
Claire Hédon was behind the microphone until 2017, when she took up the post of head of magazines at RFI. It is this long career as a journalist that led her to discover the ATD Fourth World movement, an international movement that aims to eradicate poverty, which she joined in 1992 and of which she became president in 2015.
As President of ATD Fourth World, Claire Hédon advocates for increased parental participation in schools, and makes the defence of children's rights one of her specialities. In 2017, she also became a member of the National Council for Policies to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion and the National Consultative Ethics Committee.
In 2020, she succeeded Jacques Toubon as Defender of Rights, at the head of the independent administrative authority which has prerogatives in terms of defending the rights of users of public services, respecting the ethics of security professionals, combating discrimination, defending and promoting the rights of the child and guiding and protecting whistleblowers. It is committed to defending the fundamental rights of minors in the areas of care, justice, education and social protection, as defined in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In 2020, Claire Hédon launched the antidiscriminations.fr platform and freephone number 3928, which allows anyone to report harassment, racism or violence to the Defender of Rights, according to the criteria defined by the law. Children can also call the number directly, to speak to someone and even refer themselves to the institution, without the support of an adult. Claire Hédon has made youth one of the priorities of her mandate, paying particular attention to children's voices. The aim is for children and adolescents to be listened to, believed and supported, and for them to realise that they can be actors in their own lives and contribute to the decisions that concern them.
In the 2020 Annual Report on the Rights of the Child that the institution publishes every year, the services of the Defender of Rights presented seventeen recommendations, on subjects as vast as life in schools, the implementation of a national consultation of children every two years or training professionals working with children.
- 1992
1992
Joins the ATD Fourth World movement.
- 2003
2003
Launch of Priorité Santé on RFI, which she will host until 2017.
- 2015
2015
Becomes President of ATD Fourth World.
- 2017
2017
Member of the National Council for Policies to Combat Exclusion and the National Consultative Ethics Committee.
- 2020
2020
Appointment as Defender of Rights by the President of the Republic.
Claire Hédon, the French Defender of Rights, is the patron of 2021 edition of LabCitoyen.
LabCitoyen is a programme of the Institut français that brings together about fifty young French speakers every year from all over the world to come and debate, in French, on current human rights issues. It is one of the "Labs" of the Institut français, programmes that support those who will play a leading role in the social and cultural life of their countries in the future. More than 600 young people have already participated in these programmes since their launch. Through committed support and intercultural dialogue, the "Labs" aim both to strengthen the skills of their participants and to renew the image, attractiveness and influence of France.
Find out more about LabCitoyen