Re-up: 2012 very-special-guest post from UNSG Ban Ki-moon

December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

Today’s the last day at UN headquarters for Ban Ki-moon, who’s served since 2007 as Secretary-General of the United Nations. On August 17, 2012, he honored this blog by contributing a very special guest post: as we then noted, Ban’s staff gave us permission to publish in full “Remarks to the World Congress of Global Partnership for Young Women,” a speech he delivered that same week in Seoul, Republic of Korea. We are very pleased to reprint that guest post below.

“Women are leading U.N. efforts”

I am very happy to be here.

What a wonderful conference.
Looking at all of you, I see the world represented. Many of you travelled long distances – from other parts of Asia, from Africa and beyond. You bring a truly global dimension to this World Congress. Welcome.
Whether you came from near or far, your journey to this Conference is part of an important trend of women standing taller and taller in the international arena.

Today I want to discuss women’s leadership from peace to development at the United Nations and around the world. I will share my vision for greater engagement. And I will tell you specifically what I am doing to accomplish that critical goal.
The story of women is about crossing frontiers, breaking boundaries and charting a new path. It is a story told in numbers, percentages and statistics. But ultimately, this is a story about people. And you are writing that story – you young women and men are the authors and the actors.
I was raised on the teachings of Confucius. He said,

‘To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order.’

As Secretary-General, I must first make women’s advancement a priority in my own “family” – that is the United Nations.
When I began my term, there had been very few women peace envoys in the history of United Nations. I set out to change this. Now we have more female envoys than ever before.
Some people ask whether a woman can command a force of thousands or tens of thousands of troops. My answer is: Watch and learn. I named women to head some of our most difficult peacekeeping operations. Our missions in Liberia, the Central African Republic and South Sudan are all led by women. In total I have appointed seven female Special Representatives.
My senior legal adviser is a woman. My most senior police official is a woman too. So is my Chef de Cabinet. I have increased senior female appointments at the level of Under-Secretary-General by 60 per cent, and at the Assistant Secretary-General level by 40 per cent.
Women are leading United Nations efforts across the board – in peacekeeping, development and human rights.
But, we want more qualified women throughout our ranks. We are working to increase female representation across our middle management.
Wherever I go, I raise the issue of women’s empowerment with governments. That is because although there has been important progress, women still do not have a strong enough voice in decision-making. Women make up just a fraction of all chief executives of the world’s biggest companies. Fewer than one in ten presidents or prime ministers are women. And less than one in five parliamentarians are women. This world statistic is reflected here in the Republic of Korea.
The lack of women’s representation – of women’s empowerment — affects individual women’s rights – and it holds back whole countries.
One recent UN study showed that limits on women’s economic participation cost the Asia-Pacific region nearly $90 billion each year in lost productivity.

That is why I am so grateful that Duksung University and UN Women decided to focus their cooperation on the UN Women Young Women’s Partnership Programme, including the Asia-Africa Programme.
Africa is a young continent. More than two thirds of all people there are under the age of 30. I have seen Africa’s youth in action. Africa’s women are driving progress. They carry crops and children … they lead peaceful demonstrations and they head governments … they win the Nobel Peace Prize and they score even greater rewards knowing they are making a difference in our world.
Gender discrimination blocks progress. Equality makes it possible to achieve huge breakthroughs.
Helping women is critical to reaching the Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015.
Women do more work for less pay than men. Women produce up to 80 per cent of all food in sub-Saharan Africa. But their households are poorer, so they spend more of their income on food. They own far less land than men.
On education, millions more girls are in primary school than before. But there are far more girls shut out of class than boys. Two thirds of the 780 million people in the world who cannot read are women.
We have made progress in driving down maternal mortality. But a woman still dies every minute and a half from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. This is a tragedy we can stop. I am spearheading a global movement called Every Woman Every Child to end these needless deaths, and to protect all children from preventable diseases.
We are moving on all fronts to invest in women so they can reach their full potential, drive development and lead us to a better future.
At the same time, we are looking beyond 2015. I have just appointed a High-Level Panel on the UN Development Agenda after 2015. I deliberately included many prominent women on the panel, and I count on the men to take gender concerns as seriously as I do. Reaching the MDGs and advancing to the next stage will only be possible when we unleash the power of women.
Women will only flourish when they are safe. That is why I am also leading a global campaign called UNiTE to End Violence against Women.
Around the world, more and more people realize that abusing or attacking women is a moral outrage and a criminal offence.
In Fiji, for example, the UN is sponsoring a programme that helps communities come together to report anyone who attacks women to the police. The results are clear. Men are showing more respect. Last year, 15 communities joined the effort, and that number is expected to double by the end of this year.
We need to end violence, give women a say in decision-making, protect their health and ensure equal opportunities. All of these challenges are at the top of the UN’s agenda – and they are on your agenda. The UN Women-Duksung Women’s University Global Partnership for Young Women is a wonderful initiative with enormous potential.
Ladies and gentlemen – but especially ladies,
Four years ago, I had the chance to meet Yi So-yeon, the first Korean astronaut who carried the UN flag into outer space. At the time, she was barely 30 years old.
I was deeply honoured when she presented me with that special UN flag. I immediately hung it on the wall in my office.
Yi So-yeon once said,

‘I want to show a side of women: that we also have great abilities. To me that is the biggest goal.’

That blue banner reminds me that women can go anywhere – even to outer space – and that they can take the values of the United Nations with them.
Our values – peace, human rights, opportunity and dignity for all people – are universal values. You do not need a flag to uphold them. You do not need a spaceship. All you need is the determination to stand up for what is right.
Young women should dream big. Look to the stars. Think of the grandmothers, mothers and other women who came before you – how hard they struggled and how much they accomplished. And think of the daughters, sisters and friends who will follow in your footsteps.
I count on each of you to build a new future where women are truly equal, and the whole world can benefit.
Thank you.

[photos, from top: Secretary-General Ban swears in Patricia O’Brien of Ireland as Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs and United Nations Legal Counsel (credit for 2008 UN photo); Karin Landgren of Sweden, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Liberia (credit for UN photo); Rima Salah of Jordan, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (credit for UN photo); Secretary-General Ban with Hilde Johnson of Norway, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan credit for 2011 UN photo by Evan Schneider; Susanna Malcorra of Argentina, Secretary-General’s Chef de Cabinet (credit for UN photo); Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, co-winner of 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, and co-chair of High-Level Panel just appointed by Secretary-General Ban (photo credit); Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon with Secretary-General Ban and UN flag (credit for 2008 UN photo)]

‘Nuff said: Sebutinde on women judges, international courts

December 28, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

“I’ve often heard people say, even women say, during the campaign and after, that it’s not a big deal for a women to be on this court. They have no idea what a deal it is. It is a big deal.”

So commented Judge Julia Sebutinde, reflecting on her tenure at the International Court of Justice. She was quoted in “Africa’s most senior female judge: ‘Would these men even listen to me?’, a November profile published in South Africa’s Daily Maverick. Sebutinde has served on the court since 2012, following a lengthy U.N. election process; she is the 4th woman, and the 1st African woman, to be elected in the court’s 70-year history.

Sebutinde began her distinguished career as a lawyer and judge in her native Uganda. She also has served as a judge both on the Special Court for Sierra Leone and on the International Criminal Court. In the Daily Maverick article, she not only speaks of her work at the ICJ, but also offers criticism of current opposition to the ICC. (credit for ICJ photo)

Women’s leadership in academia: Georgia Law session January 5 at AALS meeting in San Francisco

December 22, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / 1 Comment

Accompanying us to San Francisco will be this Georgia WILL banner. It depicts Edith House, co-valedictorian of the Georgia Law Class of 1925 and Florida’s 1st woman U.S. Attorney. Our Women Law Students Association hosts a lecture in her honor each year; slated to speak at the 35th annual Edith House Lecture, on March 2, 2017, is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Women’s roles will be the focus of the University of Georgia School of Law Roundtable Discussion on Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday, January 5, 2017, at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in San Francisco.

This brainstorming session for women law professors, clinicians, or librarians who are or are interested in becoming administrators within law schools and universities at large. Among other things, we’ll explore whether there’s interest in a sustained project to foster women’s leadership in legal academia, and if so, what should be the contours of that project.

Taking part in the discussion will be 4 Georgia Law administrators: Lori A. Ringhand, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law; Usha Rodrigues, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and M.E. Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance & Securities Law; Carol A. Watson, Director of the Alexander Campbell King Law Library; and yours truly, Diane Marie Amann, Associate Dean for International Programs & Strategic Initiatives and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law. Also featured will be another IntLawGrrls contributor, Monika Kalra Varma – now an executive leadership consultant, she served for the last five years as Executive Director of the District of Columbia Bar Pro Bono Program.

We’ll be hosting a reception as part of the discussion, and look forward to conversation with many of our counterparts throughout the AALS community. And we welcome the cosponsorship of the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education.

This event is part of our law school’s ongoing initiative, Georgia WILL (Georgia Women in Law Lead). It began in August with a celebration of the centenary date on which the legislature authorized women to practice law in Georgia, and has continued with lectures by Georgia Law alumnae and other prominent women; among them, a federal judge, a former U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, and a corporate general counsel. The January 5 session will kick off a half dozen spring semester Georgia WILL events.

AALS-goers interested in the subject are most welcome to take part in the January 5 discussion/reception, to be held in Yosemite C, a room in the Ballroom Level of the AALS conference hotel, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, 333 O’Farrell Street. Please join us, and please feel free to forward this notice to interested colleagues.

For more information, e-mail ruskintlaw@uga.edu.

(Cross-posted from Exchange of Notes)

IntLawGrrl Louise Chappell’s study of ICC and gender justice featured in EJIL: Talk! symposium

December 21, 2016December 22, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

What a welcome surprise to read words I penned a few years ago quoted-within-a-quote in a post today at EJIL: Talk! To be precise, Washington & Lee Law Professor Mark Drumbl wrote:

“Gender justice initiatives at the ICC remain entwined with other advocacy movements. Notable in this regard is the push for children’s rights. The pairing of women’s rights with children’s rights – while perhaps seeming somewhat odd – does reflect the historical association, in Diane Marie Amann’s words (cited by Chappell), of ‘women and children as bystanders, beings not fully conscious of the world around them’ within the Grotian Weltanschauung.”

The quote, from my essay “The Post-Postcolonial Woman or Child,” appears in Drumbl’s contribution to a terrific EJIL: Talk! symposium analyzing The Politics of Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court (Oxford University Press 2015), an important book by Louise A. Chappell (below right), Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Chappell (who, like Drumbl, is an IntLawGrrls contributor) traces her subject through chapters that “represent,” “recognize,” “redistribute,” and “complement” gender justice at the ICC, an institution that “nested” “gender advocacy,” as Drumbl puts it in his review, entitled “Gender Justice and International Criminal Law: Peeking and Peering Beyond Stereotypes.” He adds: “In short: her superb book is a must-read.”

Joining Drumbl in this symposium are:

► An opening post by EJIL: Talk! Associate Editor Helen McDermott, a post-doctoral Research Fellow in law and armed conflict in the Oxford Martin School Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations at the University of Oxford, England.

► An introduction by Chappell, who is due to close the conversation later this week (latter post now available here).

► “Beyond a Recitation of Sexual Violence Provisions: A Mature Social Science Evaluation of the ICC” by Patricia Viseur Sellers, who serves as the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s Special Adviser for Prosecution Strategies, is a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford University, and the former Legal Advisor for Gender and Acting Senior Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

► “Gender Justice Legacies at the ICC” by yet another IntLawGrrls contributor, Valerie Oosterveld, Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies), Associate Professor, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law, London, Ontario, Canada.

To crib from Drumbl’s post, the series is a must-read.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Pamela Yates’ new Guatemala film “500 Years” to screen at our 10th Birthday Conference

December 19, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

A very special film event will open IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference, the global gathering we’re hosting this spring.

On the evening of Thursday, March 2, 2017, the conference will begin with a screening of “500 Years,” a documentary about Guatemala. This Athens, Georgia, screening – taking place just weeks after the film’s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Festival – will feature a conversation with its award-winning director, Pamela Yates (below), and producer, Paco de Onís. Yates, who describes herself as “an American filmmaker and human rights defender,” has posted on her work at IntLawGrrls (see here and here), which is celebrating a decade as the pre-eminent international law blog written primarily by women.

“500 Years” concludes a Guatemala trilogy begun with “When the Mountains Tremble” (1983) and “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator” (2011), As described at the Skylight Pictures website:

“From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, ‘500 Years’ tells a sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala’s recent history, through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.”

On Friday, March 3, 2017, IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference will continue with the daylong Research Forum at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center. As introduced in prior posts, this Forum will feature presentations by international law academics, practitioners, and policymakers, plus a plenary panel on “strategies to promote women’s participation in shaping international law and policy amid the global emergence of antiglobalism.”

This IntLawGrrls event is part of the law school’s Georgia Women in Law Lead (Georgia WILL) initiative and of the Global Georgia Initiative of the university’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. Additional conference cosponsors include Georgia Law’s Women Law Students Association and International Law Society, the American Society of International Law and ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group, and the Planethood Foundation.

Details on the conference are at the webpage containing the call for papers (deadline January 1, 2017).

(credit for Skylight Pictures’ photo above, by Daniel Hernández-Salazar; source for photo of Yates)

New image for a new year

December 18, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

IntLawGrrls readers no doubt will notice our weekend makeover.

Changing with the times, we’ve donned a look that’s less peppermint and more muted, more Coco Chanel. It’s our 4th shift in 10 years (see here and here).

Once our makeover’s complete, you’ll find a more streamlined list of contributors, as well as easy-to-locate subscribe/follow/contact information.

Our new banner excerpts the photo above, which we reprinted earlier this month in our tribute to departed IntLawGrrl Hope Lewis. The banner features the Washington, D.C., statue of IntLawGrrls foremother Eleanor Roosevelt. (A cardboard cutout of that statue, shown below, often joins IntLawGrrls in group photos. ER will be present at IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference on March 2-3, 2017, too; we welcome you to respond to our call for papers by the January 1 deadline.)

The banner depicts a pink granite grotto at the Roosevelt Memorial near the Tidal Basin. There, the former U.S. First Lady and lifelong human rights campaigner casts a stern look rightward, toward the White House, Capitol Hill, and the Supreme Court. In effect, ER stands sentry over events in this world capital. Seems a fitting metaphor for the ongoing mission of IntLawGrrls: voices in international law, policy, practice.

Travel grants will help students and very-early-career persons to take part in IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference

December 13, 2016December 17, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

A scene from IntLawGrrls’ last conference, “Women in International Criminal Law,” October 29, 2010, at the American Society of International Law

Delighted to announce that we will be able to make it easier for some students or very-early-career persons whose papers are accepted for “IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference” to take part in this daylong celebration.

Thanks to the generosity of the Planethood Foundation, we have established a fund that will provide small grants to help defray the costs of travel to and accommodation at our conference, to be held March 3, 2017, at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, Athens, Georgia USA. The law school is hosting as part of its Georgia Women in Law Lead initiative.

We’re pleased too to announce two additional conference cosponsors: the American Society of International Law and ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG).

As detailed in our call for papers/conference webpage and prior posts, organizers Diane Marie Amann, Beth Van Schaack, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, and Kathleen A. Doty welcome paper proposals from academics, students, policymakers, and advocates, in English, French, or Spanish, on all topics in international, comparative, foreign, and transnational law and policy.

In addition to paper workshops, there will be at least one plenary panel, on “strategies to promote women’s participation in shaping international law and policy amid the global emergence of antiglobalism.”

The deadline for submissions will be January 1, 2017. Students or very-early-career person who would like to be considered for one of these grants to help defray travel costs are asked to indicate this in their submissions. Papers will be accepted on a rolling basis – indeed, we’ve already received several – so we encourage all to submit as soon as they are able.

For more information, see the call for papers or e-mail doty@uga.edu.

“Stand up for someone’s rights today”: High Commissioner Zeid on 68th anniversary of Universal Declaration

December 10, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

In passing: Our sister, Hope Lewis

December 9, 2016December 10, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / 1 Comment

Hope Lewis, front row, 3d from right, with other IntLawGrrls at Eleanor Roosevelt’s statue in Washington, D.C.

It is with profound sadness that I must share with readers news of the passing of Professor Hope Lewis, 54, one of our earliest and most dedicated IntLawGrrls contributors.

A lovely obituary posted today at the website of Hope’s home institution, Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, reports that she died this past Tuesday, December 6, following a long illness. It further reports:

“Lewis’ funeral will be on Thursday, Dec. 15, at the Bethel AME Church, 40 Walk Hill St., in Boston. The viewing will be at 10 a.m., with a service to follow at 11 a.m. Those who would like to share a memory of Hope may do so at http://www.never-gone.com/memorials/hopelewis. Donations may be made in Lewis’ honor to Partners in Health.”

I learned of her death this afternoon from Iowa Law’s Associate Dean Adrien Katherine Wing, who recalled:

“We knew each other as young lawyers involved with Transafrica, back in the anti-apartheid struggle. We both became professors and I featured her wonderful work on Jamaican women in one of my anthologies. I greatly admired her courage and hope as she taught and published for decades despite being blinded as a result of diabetes. She co-authored the seminal textbook Human Rights and the Global Marketplace: Economic, Social, and Cultural Dimensions. She co-drafted and compiled the ‘Boston Principles on the Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of Non-citizens,’ a project of the law school’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy. She was a founding co-chair of the ASIL’s International Disability Rights Interest Group and served on the ASIL executive council between 2010 and 2013.”

In 2011, she received the American Bar Association Section on International Law Mayre Rasmussen Award for the Advancement of Women in International Law, in recognition of her tireless mentoring and support of her students and colleagues.

Hope Lewis, 5th from right, and other IntLawGrrls at a luncheon of ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG)

I am grateful to have known Hope. We met in person only once or twice, at the American Society of International Law meetings where the photos at left and above were made. Despite our few in-person acquaintances, I feel I came to know her through our work together on this blog. She was devoted to IntLawGrrls, as this 2012 quote by her attests:

“When I first started blogging … it was frowned on by some. Now, some blogs have strong reputations, frankly I think ours does. Some blogs are essential reading.”

Her posts most certainly were essential reading.

Hope joined us in our 1st year, on February 4, 2008. I reprint below, in full, our post welcoming her and her own post honoring her foremothers. The entries signaled issues she would explore subsequently, in her many, many contributions (available here and here): Hope’s posts explored intersections of race, ethnicity, sex and gender, the Caribbean, Africa and the African diaspora, human rights and economic rights. Like many of us, she shared what the election of Barack Obama as the United States’ 44th President, and the arrival of him and his family in the White House, meant to her, her country, and those she loved. (here, here, here, here, here, here) Hope identified and celebrated “Black Women Teaching International Law.” (here, here, here, here) She contributed one series on the implementation of obligations assumed by U.S. ratification of CERD, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Race Discrimination, and another series on disability rights.

I learned so much from Hope, and I so greatly valued her perspective. I will miss her terribly, and I look forward to celebrating her memory with other ‘Grrls in a few months, when we gather for our 10th Birthday Conference.

Rest well, sister.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Our newest IntLawGrrl: Hope Lewis

We’re proud to announce that Hope Lewis (left) is joining us today as our newest IntLawGrrl.
Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts, Hope’s areas of scholarly concentration are international human rights law and other aspects of public international law. In 2005 she published, along with co-editor Jeanne M. Woods, Human Rights and the Global Marketplace: Economic, Social, and Cultural Dimensions, the United States’ 1st textbook focusing on economic, social and cultural rights. She is also an editor of the law school’s Social Science Research Network (SSRN) online publication, the Human Rights and the Global Economy abstracts journal (our latest “connections” link), and has published in a variety of leading law reviews and journals. She’s been a guest contributor to the blackprof.com blog. Hope received the 2001 Haywood Burns-Shanara Gilbert Award for her teaching, scholarship, and human rights activism, and has been a Harvard Law School visiting scholar and a fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research.
Before entering academia, Hope was an attorney-adviser in the Office of Chief Counsel of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and also a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow and Harvard Fellow in Public Interest Law at TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, D.C., based NGO that focuses on U.S. foreign policy toward Africa and the Caribbean. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University/Radcliffe college and a J.D. from Harvard Law.
Hope dedicates her IntLawGrrls contributions to “Miss Lou.” As she explains below, the name’s meant to recall both her grandmother and Louise Bennett-Coverley, the African-Jamaican poet/singer, political satirist, and social critic.
Heartfelt welcome!

Finding “Miss Lou”: In Honor of The Honorable Louise Bennett-Coverley

The notion of an international law blog by women seemed innovative and, somehow, just right when I first heard about the birth of IntLawGrrls almost a year ago. Once I finally decided to enter the fray, naming and claiming an international “foremother” also sounded inspiring and fun.
Still, actually choosing such a woman – I wanted to honor the legacy of Black women in international affairs – turned out to be much more challenging than I thought. Not that Black women’s participation in international law, foreign policy, or cross-cultural relations is anything new. But all too often their contributions are invisible in the media or subsequent historical narratives, marginalized or overshadowed by the work of more famous male and/or non-Bla

ck relatives or colleagues, or even undermined as distracting or intrusive of mainstream or radical agendas.
No historian, I searched my own limited memory and experience; various intriguing options presented themselves:
► “Nanny” (?-c.1733), legendary Jamaican-Maroon who led resistance to British incursions into Maroon territory), as Kimberly J. Brown discusses here. Nanny of the Windward Maroons is the transnational foremother of Karen E. Bravo, another of us IntLawGrrls.
► Sojourner Truth (1797-November 26, 1883), African-American abolitionist, feminist, orator, and preacher.
► Harriet Tubman (c.1820-March 10, 1913), conductor of the Underground Railroad, who helped hundreds of African-Americans escape slavery to free states in the U.S. and Canada; Union-side Civil War scout, spy, and nurse.
► Mary McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875-May 18, 1955), African-American educator, founder of the National Council of Negro Women; consultant on interracial affairs at the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945.
► Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891-January 28, 1960), novelist, poet, anthropologist of Black cultures in the southern United States, Haiti, and Jamaica.
► Shirley Graham DuBois (November 11, 1907-March 1977), African-American novelist, historian, and political activist; lived as an expatriate in Ghana and Egypt.
► Angela E.V. King (August 28, 1938-February 5, 2007), leading African-Jamaican diplomat and advocate for girls and women; UN Assistant Secretary-General; head of the UN Division for the Advancement of Women.
Because of such women, there are today so many living influential Black women “IntLawGrrls” that they cannot be listed on a single page (and yet, they are still far too few).
Then it hit me. All of my previous work has been dedicated to my mother and my grandmother (middle name Louise), each cross-cultural travelers of a sort. (See, e.g., my 1997 article
Lionheart Gals Facing the Dragon.)
And, like many others of Afro-Caribbean descent, I grew up admiring “Miss Lou,” the stage name of revered African-Jamaican poet/singer, political satirist, and social critic Louise Bennett-Coverley (above right). My grandmother (1902-2005) was also called “Miss Lou” perhaps not coincidentally, since she also loved to perform long dramatic poems for public gatherings.
As detailed here, The Honorable Louise Bennett-Coverley (“Miss Lou”) was born in Jamaica on September 7, 1919 and passed away on July 26, 2006. Educated under the British colonial system, Mrs. Bennett-Coverley became known for documenting and valuing indigenous and syncretic African-Jamaican cultural norms and vernacular through poetry and storytelling. A humorist, she dramatized and poked fun at everyday life among grassroots people, as well as at the pretensions of politicians and British high society. Her social commentary burned in the memory and hit hard, but also left people roaring with laughter.
The Jamaican government and people formally recognized her as Ambassador at Large and granted her the country’s highest honors (the Order of Jamaica and Member of the Order of Merit) for her contributions to the reclamation and enhancement of Jamaican culture.
The international connection? Miss Lou was a walking, talking course in post-colonial globalization. Some of Bennett-Coverley’s poetry captured the contradictions of colonial and post-colonial migration perfectly – the yearnings for socio-economic opportunity promised in the racially charged colonial metropole; the desire to adopt superficially the styles and customs of the colonizer; and the struggle between rejecting home country culture and language as “backward” and the need to hold on to it as a sign of cultural integrity and pride.
Written in response to a large British-government encouraged migration from Jamaica to England during post-World War II labor shortages, her poem “Colonization in Reverse,” excerpted below, still resonates today. It spoofs the headlong rush to find fortune in “the Mother-land,” but also subtly reveals the political, economic, and cultural resistance and subversion that migration itself could represent. The former British colonizers themselves now feared “invasion” by Afro-Caribbean peoples.
The Creole patois spelling is retained below as used in 1966. (Reggae artist Bob Marley is said to have credited Miss Lou’s example with providing the basis for his own use of Jamaican dialect over the objections of early record distributors that it would damage international sales). (See Times of London obituary of Louise Bennett Coverley.)

Colonization in Reverse (1966), by Louise Bennett

Wat a joyful news, Miss Mattie,
I feel like me heart gwine burs
Jamaica people colonizin
Englan in reverse.By de hundred, by de tousan
From country and from town,
By de ship-load, by de plane-load
Jamaica is Englan boun.
. . . .
What a islan! What a people!
Man an woman, old an young
Jus a pack dem bag an baggage
An tun history upside dun!My blog posts will be dedicated to the women named above, and especially to Miss Lou, for her ability to affirm culture and criticize injustice with humor and insight, and for her hope that all of us could turn history upside down.

ICC Prosecutor’s Policy on Children, an international criminal justice capstone

December 7, 2016 / Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

Children have become the unwilling emblems of armed conflict and extreme violence.

Searing images have surfaced in news stories, aid workers’ alerts, and rights groups’ dispatches: a 5 year old pulled from Aleppo rubble, orphans at a Goma children’s center, a young Colombian woman struggling to readjust after years as a child soldier, and, face down on a Turkish beach, a drowned 3-year-old refugee. Images of this nature were shown yesterday at the International Criminal Court, during the opening statement in Ongwen, with Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda herself warning “that some of these images are extremely disturbing.”

There is no better time than now to press for strategies both to combat such harms and to bring the persons responsible to justice. Presenting an important step toward those goals is the Policy on Children of the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor.

Prosecutor Bensouda launched the Policy on Children at an event during last month’s meeting of the ICC Assembly of States Parties. Bensouda quoted from the U.N. expert Graça Machel’s pathbreaking 1996 report on children and armed conflict, then commented:

“[I]t is indeed unconscionable that we so clearly and consistently see children’s rights attacked and that we fail to defend them.
“It is unforgivable that children are assaulted, violated, murdered and yet our conscience is not revolted nor our sense of dignity challenged. This represents a fundamental crisis of our civilisation and a failure of our humanity.
“By adopting the Policy on Children, which we launch today, we at the Office of the Prosecutor seek to ensure that children suffering the gravest injustices are not ignored. That through the vector of the law, we do what we can to protect and advance the rights of children within the framework of the Rome Statute.”

Leading the event was journalist Zeinab Badawi. Among the many others who offered live or video interventions were: Mamadou Ismaël Konaté, Mali’s Minister of Justice and Human Rights of the Republic of Mali; Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights; Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict; Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees; Nobel Peace Prizewinner Leymah Gbowee; Lieutenant General Roméo-Dallaire, Founder of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative (see also IntLawGrrls post by Kirsten Stefanik); Marc Dullaert, Founder of KidsRights and the Netherlands’ former Children’s Ombudsman; and Coumba Gawlo, U.N. Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador and National Goodwill Ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

I am honored also to have offered brief remarks – and am especially honored to have assisted in the preparation of this Policy in my capacity as the Prosecutor’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict, working alongside a dedicated Office of the Prosecutor team led by Shamila Batohi, Gloria Atiba Davies, and Yayoi Yamaguchi. Preparation included experts’ gatherings at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center, at Leiden Law School, and at the ICC itself, as well as consultations around the globe with young persons who had endured armed conflict. (Legal research produced by my students, in seminars on Children & International Law and through the work of the Georgia Law Project on Armed Conflict & Children, also was invaluable.)

The result is a Policy on Children spanning 47 pages, published simultaneously in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Swahili. Identifying children as persons under eighteen (paragraph 16), it covers a gamut of issues related to children and the work of the Prosecutor; for example, general policy, regulatory framework, and engagement with children at all stages of the proceedings. Among many other landmarks, the Policy:

► Embraces a child-sensitive approach grounded in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty ratified by every U.N. member state save one: the United States, which is also an ICC nonparty state. (My remarks happily noted that my other state of citizenship, the Republic of Ireland, is a state party to both the Child Rights Convention and the ICC’s Rome Statute.) Paragraph 22 of the Policy on Children thus states:

“In light of the foregoing, the Office will adopt a child-sensitive approach in all aspects of its work involving children. This approach appreciates the child as an individual person and recognises that, in a given context, a child may be vulnerable, capable, or both. The child-sensitive approach requires staff to take into account these vulnerabilities and capabilities. This approach is based on respect for children’s rights and is guided by the general principles of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child: non-discrimination; the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and the right to express one’s views and have them considered.”

► Views children, like all human beings, as multi-faceted individuals and, simultaneously, as members of multi-generational communities. (See, for example, paragraph 100.) Paragraph 25 states:

“Children, by the very fact of their youth, are frequently more vulnerable than other persons; at certain ages and in certain circumstances, they are dependent on others. Notwithstanding any vulnerability and dependence, children possess and are continuously developing their own capacities – capacities to act, to choose and to participate in activities and decisions that affect them. The Office will remain mindful, in all aspects of its work, of the evolving capacities of the child.”

► Acknowledges in paragraph 17 “that most crimes under the Statute affect children in various ways, and that at times they are specifically targeted” – and then pledges that “the Office will, in order to capture the full extent of the harm suffered, seek to highlight the multi-faceted impact on children, at all stages of its work.” The regulatory framework thus enumerates a range of crimes against and affecting children:

recruitment and use by armed forces and armed groups of children under fifteen as war crimes (paragraphs 39-43);
forcible transfer of children and prevention of birth as acts of genocide (paragraphs 44-46);
trafficking of children as a form of enslavement constituting a crime against humanity (paragraphs 47-48);
attacks on buildings dedicated to education and health care as war crimes (paragraph 49);
torture and related war crimes and crimes against humanity (paragraph 50);
persecution as a crime against humanity (paragraph 50); and
sexual and gender-based violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity (paragraph 52).

► Details the Office’s plan for applying the child-sensitive approach, with respect both to all stages of proceedings, including preliminary examinations, investigations, and prosecutions, and to cooperation and external relations, institutional development, and implementation.

Even as cases involving crimes against and affecting children, like Ongwen, go forward, the Office is working on implementation of its new Policy on Children. The implementation phase will include developing versions of the Policy accessible to children. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to contribute this phase – and to hearing others’ views on the Policy.