Born in 1956, Mario Busdachin studied law in Trieste, where he held the post of municipal councillor between 1978 and 1982. In the 1980s he was active in promoting human and civil rights with the Radical Party in Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union. Between 1993 and 1998 he worked in the United States on campaigns for setting up ad hoc international courts for war crimes in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia. He was engaged in the battle for a global moratorium on the death penalty at the United Nations and was Secretary of No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) from 1994 to 1999. Since July 2003 he has been Secretary General of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), based in The Hague.