Loi Gayssot

The Gayssot Act (Loi Gayssot), voted for on July 13, 1990, makes it an offense in France to question the existence of the category of crimes against humanity as defined in the London Charter of 1945, on the basis of which Nazi leaders were convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-46 (art.9). Proposed by the communist deputy Jean-Claude Gayssot, it is one of several European laws prohibiting Holocaust denial. Its first article states that "any discrimination founded on the membership or non-membership to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a religion is prohibited." The Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'homme (Human Rights Consultative National Commission), created in 1947, is charged of making a yearly, public report on the situation of racism in France.

After Robert Faurisson was removed from his university chair under the act, he challenged it as a violation of his rights to freedom of expression under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Human Rights Committee upheld the Gayssot Act as necessary to counter possible anti-Semitism.