Jean-Martin Mbemba (born 13 August 1942) is a Congolese politician and lawyer. He is the President of the Union for Progress (UP) and has been a prominent politician in Congo-Brazzaville since the early 1990s. He served in the 1991–1992 transitional government as Minister of Justice; later, under President Denis Sassou Nguesso, he was Minister of Labour and Social Security from 1997 to 1999, Minister of Justice from 1999 to 2005, and Minister of State for the Civil Service and State Reform from 2005 to 2009. Since October 2009, he has been the President of the National Commission of Human Rights. Legal career Mbemba, an ethnic Téké, was born in Brazzaville and studied in France. He was President of the Association of Congolese Students in France from December 1968 to December 1970, and he was President of the Federation of African Students in France from December 1971 to December 1972. He practiced as a lawyer in Brazzaville from February 1976 to June 1991. At the 1987 French trial of Klaus Barbie, a German war criminal of World War II, Mbemba was an assistant defense lawyer in the team headed by Jacques Verges. In the trial, the defense pursued a strategy of highlighting crimes committed by the West, including France itself, in hopes that Barbie's crimes during the German occupation of France would appear less offensive by comparison. Mbemba pointed to France's use of forced labour during the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway in his own country, as well as France's violent suppression of the 1947 revolt against colonial rule in Madagascar; in addition, he denounced South African apartheid as "the ultimate crime against humanity". Following the trial, Mbemba was Secretary-General of the Union of Lawyers of Central Africa from September 1987 to June 1991. Political career Mbemba has been President of the Union for Progress (UP), a political party, since its founding in October 1990. He participated in the 1991 National Conference and headed the committee for the drafting of internal regulations at the National Conference. At the end of the National Conference, he was appointed as Minister of Justice and Administrative Reform in the transitional government of Prime Minister André Milongo, serving in that post from June 1991 to June 1992. He was elected as a municipal councillor from the Fifth Arrondissement (Ouenzé) of Brazzaville in 1992, and soon afterward he was elected to the National Assembly in the 1992