'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'The Court was explicit in explaining what is required to ensure indigenous and tribal peoples’ right to consultation. The Court stated that the obligation to consult is the responsibility of the state; therefore, planning and conducting the consultation process cannot be delegated to a private company or a third party. The Court also considered that the consultation process should entail a “genuine dialogue as part of a participatory process in order to reach an agreement,” and it should be conceived as “a true instrument of participation,” done in “good faith,” with “mutual trust” and with the goal of reaching a consensus.'

–  Lisl Brunner, a human rights specialist with the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Karla Quintana, a human rights specialist with the Commission's Litigation Group, in an ASIL Insight entitled "The Duty to Consult in the Inter-American System: Legal Standards after Sarayaku." The co-authors set forth the reasoning in Caso del Pueblo Indígena Kichwa de Sarayaku v. Ecuador (June 27, 2012), in which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that the respondent state was liable for failing to discharge its duty to consult with the indigenous Sarayaku people in connection with an oil project, undertaken in 1996, that destroyed part of a rainforest in the people's traditional lands.
As Brunner (right) and Quintana (left) explain, although the decision arose within the inter-American human rights system, it is likely to have impact on actors brought before other regimes as well; for example, those that consider: the International Labour Organization Convention No. 169, titled the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

On August 11

On this day in ...
... 1983, the Convention concerning Occupational Safety and Health Convention and the Working Environment, which had been adopted 2 years earlier, entered into force. Article 4 of the treaty sets forth the following principles:

'1. Each Member shall, in the light of national conditions and practice, and in consultation with the most representative organisations of employers and workers, formulate, implement and periodically review a coherent national policy on occupational safety, occupational health and the working environment.
'2. The aim of the policy shall be to prevent accidents and injury to health arising out of, linked with or occurring in the course of work, by minimising, so far as is reasonably practicable, the causes of hazards inherent in the working environment.'

The treaty is No. 155 on the list of conventions under the auspices of the International Labour Organization. To date 59 states have ratified, the United States not among them.

(Prior August 11 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Guest Blogger: Alli Jernow

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Alli Jernow (left) as today's guest blogger.
Alli is a senior legal advisor at the International Commission of Jurists, based in Geneva, Switzerland, where she runs the Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Project.
She is the editor of the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Justice: A Comparative Law Casebook (2011). Published by the International Commission of Jurists, the book presents more than a hundred judicial decisions from all over the world, that address legal issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. In her guest post below, Alli outlines the analysis in an article she published this year in the Amsterdam Law Forum, "Morality Tales in Comparative Jurisprudence: What the Law Says About Sex." (Her guest post, which turns on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), appears within days of notice that the plaintiff in that landmark suit, John G. Lawrence, died in November at age 68.)
Before joining the International Commission of Jurists, Alli was a federal prosecutor in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She has also worked for the U.S. Department of State and for the Committee to Protect Journalists. She has served as a legal consultant on hate crimes, victims’ rights, and human trafficking for the International Labour Organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and other international groups.
Alli received a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College, a juris doctor degree from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar, and a master's degree in international affairs from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Heartfelt welcome!

On June 3

On this day in ...
... 1941 (70 years ago today), Ruma Pal (left) was born. (photo credit) After earning her bachelor's degree in law from St. Anne's College, Oxford, England, in 1968 she began practicing, in the areas of civil, revenue, labor, and constitutional law, before the Calcutta High Court in India. In 1990 Pal was appointed a judge on that court (also spelled Kolkata). Ten years later, she was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of India, a position she held until her retirement on her 65th birthday, in 2006. During her tenure Pal wrote numerous opinions on human rights issues; currently she serves as a member of the International Labour Organization Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations.

(Prior June 3 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On May 10

On this day in ...
... 1993, as detailed in this case study available at the website of the International Labour Organization, nearly 188 workers died in a toy factory fire in Thailand's Nakhon Pathom Province. (credit for photo of book on the fire) "Most of the victims were young female workers from rural families." The ILO report observed:

This disaster stands as the world’s worst accidental loss-of-life fire in an industrial building in recent history, a distinction held for 82 years by the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire that killed 146 workers in New York City.

It notes similarities between the 2 tragedies -- presence of combustible fabrics, poor exit options, and little evacuation training -- and holds both out as evidence of the need for strong work-safety regulations.

(Prior May 10 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On March 24

On this day in ...
... 1921 (90 years ago today), Mary Ellen Spear Smith (right), an English-born onetime schoolteacher who'd immigrated to Canada 30 years earlier, was sworn in as Minister without Portfolio in the government of British Columbia. She thus became the 1st woman cabinet minister in the British Empire. Three years earlier, Smith had become the 1st woman Member of the Legislative Assembly by winning a by-election to replace her husband, who'd been Finance Minister in the Liberal government. (photo credit) A suffrage leader and executive in the Canadian Red Cross, she'd run on the slogan "Women and children first." Spear Smith was re-elected in 1920 and again in 1924, was a proponent of first Mothers' Pensions and Female Minimum Wage Acts, and became the 1st woman Speaker in the British Empire. In 1929, she served as Canada's delegate to an International Labour Organization conference in Geneva. She served as President of the Liberal Party of British Columbia until she died in 1933.

(Prior March 24 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Sub-Saharan development & business laws

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post on research to be published as "Informal-Sector Entrepreneurs, Development and Formal Law: A Functional Understanding of Business Law," 59 American Journal of Comparative Law (January 2011), as well as my dedication below to two foremothers)

While discussing the policies of the prior US administration towards his country, a respected Senior Barrister in Cameroon trotted out the old adage:

'Give people fish, and you feed them for today. Teach them to fish, and you have fed them for a lifetime.'

He was, of course, asking that donor institutions and donor states provide tools that reinforce independence rather than mere handouts. This perspective does seem consistent with a trend by the World Bank, among others, to encourage business, including smaller businesses.

Indeed, prodded by economists seeking to encourage development by facilitating business, this international financial institution has over the past half-dozen years paid very serious attention to the role of business laws. Consider, for example, the World Bank’s “Doing Business” reports, annual compilations of studies focused on the contribution of law to the business environment in emerging economies.

It is easy for us in the global North, especially as we endure the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, to be cynical about the ability of business laws to facilitate development. Business laws have failed to protect the overall business environment, including the availability of credit.

As we consider what regulations to impose on the largest financial and other companies here, politicians and economists are contemplating the long-term impact on the entire business community. Thus, small businesses should care about the regulations constraining the most powerful actors in their economy. Still, their daily ability to work in sanitary, lighted, safe environments, and to expect the machinery of government to support their commercial contracts, continues to be protected.

In Sub-Saharan Africa,

► To what extent can law restrain the excesses of the most powerful agent, typically the state, while facilitating business on the ground?

► To what extent can laws help create a business environment that most closely mimics that of the global North — where, in the best of circumstances, the most powerful actors are adequately controlled?

The Sub-Saharan business climate is, of course, fundamentally different.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the informal sector represents 40-60% of gross domestic product, according to a study by Friedrich Schneider. International Labor Organization figures state that this sector employs as much as 93% of non-agricultural workers.

The informal sector thus is highly important. Yet formal law does not penetrate easily or predictably there. For this reason, simple transplantation of classic business law from the global North will not be sufficient to protect and support the business either of an informal-sector-market woman or street vendor, or even of the many business people who have a foot in both the formal and informal sectors.

The focus has to be on functionality.

The goal is to serve the informal sector with laws that accomplish there what classic business laws do for the smaller businesses of the global North. Specifically, laws should increase the predictability of transactions while limiting abuse from government and other powerful agents.

The attack should be two-pronged.
► Formal law both can constrain formal-sector actors, such as some landlords transacting with informal-sector businesses, and can mandate that formal-sector actors provide pro-business realities that Northern businesses enjoy, including sanitary work environments. Precisely because these actors are in the formal sector, they are subject to government regulation — even if the landlord is in fact the government.
► The second prong still cannot directly affect the informal-sector nano-entrepreneurs, those self-employed workers who typically operating alone or with family, and with very modest sales. These workers will not be directly affected because, almost by definition, they are at best unpredictably subject to formal laws and regulations. On the other hand, nano-entrepreneurs do tend to have a legal regime, or a quasi- legal traditional regime, that affects businesses.

This second prong, in turn, deploys two strategies to allow formal law to have as direct an impact as possible on the informal sector.
►► The first strategy aimed at the informal sector is to have formal laws that reinforce existing business norms. These laws are the most likely to support effectively a North-style predictability, since the informal-sector nano-entrepreneurs are primed to comply.
►► The second strategy aimed at the informal sector emphasizes the importance of encouraging coordination of consumers of law. This strategy is especially important when the applicable legal system is highly centralized — as is typically the case in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Discussion of relatively developed countries and their formal economies may be found in Law & Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development around the World (2008), by Columbia Law Professors Curtis J. Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor.)

Laws promoting coordination include West and Central Africa’s Economic Interest Group (specifically, Sections 869-885 of the OHADA Commercial Companies and EIG Uniform Act), as well as other laws that promote cooperatives. A case in point is the self-coordination effort in the Ghanaian chocolate industry, described here. (credit for photo of woman in Ghana holding fair-trade chocolate) (Prior IntLawGrrls post on problems in the chocolate industry.)

In short, the additional strategy aimed at the informal sector workers is to facilitate the formation of cooperatives.

The goal is for business-related laws to achieve in Sub-Saharan Africa the functionality that classic business laws offer, in the best of times, to businesses of the global North.

On May 14

On this day in ...
... 1965 (65 years ago today), Frances Perkins died 85 years after she'd been born Fannie Coralie Perkins in Boston, Massachusetts. In the last decade of her life Perkins, holder of an M.A. in social economics from Columbia University, served as a member of the faculty of the School and Industrial Relations at Cornell. She's best known, however, for having served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor -- and so as the 1st woman Cabinet member in the United States. Perkins helped spearhead the United States' entry into the International Labour Organization. Among many other achievements, this feminist, labor activist, and settlement house worker "was also the principal architect of the Social Security Act." (credit for 1960 photo of Perkins, center, at event honoring the Act's 25th anniversary) She's also a foremother of ours, thanks to the nomination by IntLawGrrl Janie Chuang.

(Prior May 14 posts are here, here, and here)

Gendercide, sex trafficking in China

(Our thanks to IntLawGrrls for this opportunity to guest post on the article that we recently published in the Fordham University International Law Journal)

There is a demographic crisis in China that arguably rises to the level of "gendercide."
Women in China are bought and sold, murdered and made to disappear, in order to comply with a governmental policy that coincides with the cultural phenomenon of male-child preference. Demographers estimate that there are between 50 and 100 million missing women in China. In answer to the resulting scarcity of women, gangs, "specialist households," and "specialist villages" have been working in an organized chain to kidnap and sell women in China.
Several factors work interdependently to cause a serious shortage of women in China. Women are disappearing because of:
► social pressures of male-child preference;
► zealous enforcement of China’s "One-Child Policy" by local government authorities; and
► murderous responses to this policy undertaken by millions of ordinary people in China, who are desperate to have a son.
(credit for Reuters photo of above-right mural extolling One-Child Policy)
The 2000 Chinese census reported that 117 boys were born for every 100 girls, compared to the global average of 105 or 106 boys to every 100 girls. This disparity may be linked to the practice of aborting female fetuses and killing female babies.
This gender imbalance has caused an increase in prostitution and human trafficking in China.
Sex trafficking in China takes many forms:
► purchase of women for brides;
► purchase of a male son; or
► sale of unwanted female children.
Many men, primarily in rural China, desperately seek brides in a country where women are in short supply. These men will resort to purchasing a trafficked woman for marriage. Couples seeking a male child will sell or even murder their girl child in order to make room for the purchase of a trafficked baby boy. Young women and infants are bought and sold like cargo.
Human trafficking in China is a lucrative international business that is expanding due to several factors:
► the aggressive implementation of the One-Child Policy;
► a faulty legal system, and
► the blind adherence to longstanding cultural traditions that devalue women.
In China, Communist Party directives overshadow the legislative and judicial process. The primacy of government policy results in the ineffectiveness of laws that theoretically protect women and female children in China.
In order to reverse the deleterious effects of the One-Child Policy and its commodification of women, the Chinese government must make a commitment to implement laws and policies that can reverse longstanding cultural trends and combat discriminatory traditions against women.

(credit for China map, courtesy of International Labour Organization Mekong Sub-regional Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women)

Since 1979, China has instituted economic reform policies that miraculously work in harmony with a Communist political system. Now China needs to perform another miracle: the adoption of cultural reforms that produce gender parity and that stop the marginalization of women in Chinese society. Only then will the lucrative business of trafficking in women be reduced, if not eliminated entirely.

Afro-Colombians' plight

(It’s IntLawGrrls’ great pleasure to welcome back alumna Gay McDougall, who guest-posts on her current work as U.N. Independent Expert on Minorities)
　
During my official visit this month to Colombia (flag at left), I had an opportunity to meet with both President Álvaro Uribe and numerous senior government officials and to consult with persons from Afro-Colombian communities. This dialogue was in keeping with my mandate on minority issues, and helped to promote implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic minorities.
Focusing on communities who identify as Afro-Colombian, Black, Raizal and Palenquero, I visited cities and regions where these communities are prominent.
This post summarizes the preliminary views I set forward here; my findings and recommendations will be fully developed in my report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Overview
The story of Afro-Colombians begins with slavery and the massive and gross violations of the rights of African descendants that terrible chapter in history entailed. In Colombia, as slaves escaped, they were forced to find refuge in nearly uninhabitable, geographically remote regions of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, shown in the darkest color at right. (map credit) There they built communities and livelihoods under conditions of extreme isolation, harsh climate, and often extreme poverty.
As in many other countries, the legacy of slavery endures and is manifested in communities that are socially and economically marginalized, facing racist attitudes and structural discrimination. The Colombian government has made efforts to address certain aspects of the disparities faced by Afro-Colombians, but the legacy of slavery continues to have a profound impact.
New challenges also have emerged.
Afro-Colombian settlements, in rural areas and town ghettos, rival only the reservations for Indigenous peoples as the very poorest in Colombia, with extreme poverty rates of over 60%. Surveys suggest that 80% of Afro-Colombians do not have basic needs met. Infant mortality rates in Chocó and Cauca are 54 per 1,000 of the population. Life expectancy in Afro-Colombian regions is only 55. Illiteracy rates for Afro-Colombians are estimated to be twice the national average. The responses of the national Government and regional authorities have been inadequate and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
The recent census failed to capture the full demographic and socio-economic picture of the Afro-Colombians, estimated at between 10% and 25% of Colombia’s population. Additionally there is virtually no disaggregation of socio-economic data by race, so government policies are based on faulty data. I often heard from Afro-Colombians that they feel statistically "invisible", and that consequently their issues are ignored, their lives are less valued and that government policies dedicated to their needs are not achieving the desired improvements to their situations.

Legal Framework
Colombia has an impressive and commendable legislative framework that recognises many rights of Afro-Colombians, starting with the Constitution of 1991 which recognizes not only the right to non-discrimination but also the right to equality for all citizens. It also pledges to protect the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country and it promotes the political participation of minorities by establishing two reserve seats in the House of Representatives for Afro-Colombians.
Law 70 of 1993 recognises the right of black Colombians to collectively own and occupy their ancestral lands, and also reinforces rights to education, health and political participation.
While such measures are praiseworthy, the vast majority of communities and organizations that I consulted complain that implementation remains woefully inadequate, limited and sporadic. And where steps have been taken, no real enforcement has followed. As one woman told me:

‘The laws say all the right things but still, nothing has happened.’

Displaced & dispossessed
Displacement was highlighted as the highest priority issue for many Afro-Colombians. Those lands onto which runaway slaves were forced to retreat, while isolated and neglected for centuries, have in recent years been identified as the most fertile and resource rich of Colombia’s territory. This has placed these once isolated, largely self-sufficient communities directly in harm’s way.
These are also some of the most strategically important regions for guerrillas, former paramilitaries and other armed groups currently involved in narcotics production and trafficking. While the government has adopted a political position that the armed conflict has ended and paramilitary groups have demobilized, in many rural black communities that I visited I heard emotional and credible stories of murders and threats to the lives of community leaders.
The number of internally displaced persons ranges from an official tally of 3.073 million to civil society estimates as high as 4 million -- constituting the world’s second largest internal displacement situation. Those few who returned have found that others have claimed ownership or rights of usage in their absence.
Victims and communities believe that there is complete impunity for all of those who commit crimes against them.
I was pleased to meet with the Vice Minister of Defense and representatives of the police and the military during my visit. I was told of important steps being taken to build armed services that are aware of and responsive to the rights of Afro-Colombian communities and to break with the pattern of past violations. These efforts are welcome. However, more must be done to protect vulnerable communities and their leaders.
I would like to commend the work of the Ombudsman’s office in establishing a system of early warning and risk assessment for communities and leaders under threat. But the office’s alerts must be assessed by a committee of the security forces and civil institutions at the national level, which has frequently discounted the credibility of the alerts.
Displacement has particularly affected women, who have been displaced to urban areas in greater numbers than black men, and who suffer extreme vulnerability when they are. Ancestral lands from which Afro-Colombians are displaced are not only the source of livelihood and survival for communities, they are also essential for the preservation of Afro-Colombian culture, livelihood, language, tradition and for maintaining the social fabric of communities. (credit for 2007 Fiesta Palenque photo) The effects of displacement require solutions for both rural and urban communities, as recognized in a landmark decision of the Constitutional Court, Order 005 of 2009. The Court concluded that Government must act comprehensively to address the rights and needs of Afro-Colombians who are displaced and ordered specific measures; to date these have not been effectively implemented.
I welcome the establishment of the Intersectoral Commission for the Advancement of the Afro-Colombian Population, and hope that its recommendations will quickly move from the planning phase to the phase of actually impacting the lives of those who are suffering.


Women & violence
Afro-Colombian women spoke to me of their experiences, the violence committed against them, including sexual violence, the fear and trauma that they have endured on a daily basis and the challenges of their lives as women and mothers living under conditions of conflict, displacement and poverty. The rights of women to return to their community lands in security must be considered a priority.
When men have been killed, disappeared or forced to flee, women have assumed leadership roles in their communities and have shown remarkable resilience and resistance. However they do not receive the necessary recognition as community leaders and are not afforded the protection measures that they require. Mothers also spoke of losing children to forced recruitment into guerrilla and illegal armed groups.

Economic interests & "inconvenient rights"
Many Afro-Colombians have been displaced by "megaprojects", large-scale economic operations, often involving national and multinational companies, promoted by the government as bringing development and economic gain to the whole of Colombia. The communities have grave concerns about encroachment on their land rights and adverse environmental impacts; however, in the face of such economic interests and megaprojects it appears that the rights of communities are "inconvenient rights" and that the laws put in place to protect them are equally inconvenient.
Decree 1320 of 1998 requires that "prior informed consultation" must take place with Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities for the exploitation of natural resources within their territories. However I was informed that projects have been implemented without consultation or with consultations held with people who do not legitimately represent communities. Consultations must be meaningful and effective; importantly, International Labour Organisation Convention No. 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which this decree purports to incorporate into domestic law, requires that prior and informed consent of communities before projects are implemented on their lands.



Participation in decision-making
Despite the importance of political participation (prior post), Afro-Colombians are extremely poorly represented in political structures and institutions in Colombia and consequently the voices and issues of Afro-Colombians are not being sufficiently heard or given the attention that they deserve.

Protecting Migrant Domestic Workers

I've blogged before on the situation of migrant domestic workers -- largely composed of females and ethnic minorities, without permanent legal status and working in the "private" sphere, this group of laborers is uniquely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. The UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families has turned its focus to this group, and rleased last week a draft report summarizing the proceedings of October's Day of General Discussion on Migrant Domestic Workers.
Panelists began by discussing the obstacles to protection of migrant domestic workers. The central problem has long been familiar to feminist legal activists: "domestic work is broadly not perceived as real work, and is thus almost universally excluded from labour legislation and regulations and not subject to labour inspections." The curtain of the domestic sphere is drawn tightly and resists lifting, particularly when the subjects are migrants. Many domestic workers, the report notes, have irregular migration status, and are thus particularly vulnerable to sexual and other abuse. Employers withhold salaries, confiscate migration documents, and fail to contribute to social security benefits, without threat of investigation let alone prosecution. In addition to the obvious candidates for treaty protection (CEDAW and CMW), the report suggests that International Labor Organization conventions, including those prohibiting forced labor and employment discrimination as well as those concerning migration for employment (none of which has been ratified by the U.S.).
The first working group focused on the recruitment of migrant domestic workers, suggesting that protective bilateral agreements between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries as well as standard binding recruitment contracts might help to prevent the exorbitant recruitment fees and the lack of written contracts that lead to exploitation of migrant domestic workers. Raising awareness on the part of migrant domestic workers about their rights is also an important protective measure. The second working group highlighted the link between stringent immigration laws and exploitation of domestic migrant workers -- because these laborers often have no legal means of entry into countries of employment, they fail to report mistreatment to the police for fear of deportation. For others, particularly in the Middle East, work permits are attached to particular employers, increasing the opportunity for exploitation and abuse. If the migration status of domestic workers could be regularized, even through temporary work visas, this would open up the possibility of consular involvement, labor inspections, and control of health and labor standards.
The report specifically suggests use of "a gender perspective [to] facilitate understanding the specificities and gender-based discrimination that migrant domestic workers face throughout the migration process." It suggests the creation of a new ILO instrument specifically focused on migrant domestic workers, and notes the important role of sending and receiving states in piercing the private sphere to protect these vulnerable women.

On May 1

On this day in ...
... 1830, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was born -- or so she said. Some historians now believe she was in fact born on Aug. 1, 1837. It's their view that the labor agitator took the unusual step of claiming to be 7 years older than she was in order to cultivate a grandmotherly image, to establish herself as the matriarch of the labor movement. The reason that Jones (left) moved her date of birth up several months ought to be obvious: today is May Day, the date on which workers around the world have been marching for labor rights since the Chicago march of 1886 on which we've posted. What is certain is this: Jones was born into a tenant farming family in Cork, Ireland, immigrated to the United States, and became a labor organizer after losing her husband and children to yellow fever and her dressmaking shop to the Chicago fire. The transnational foremother of IntLawGrrl Johanna E. Bond, Jones led many a May Day march before her death in 1930. Here's a sample quote from the "fiery," 5-foot-tall Jones:

I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser.

... 1932, the Convention (No. 29) concerning Force or Compulsory Labor, the Forced Labour Convention that the International Labour Organization had adopted on June 28, 1930, entered into force.

Virginia Leary honored with Goler T. Butcher Medal for contributions to human rights

Virginia Leary (left) is evidence of the truth in the adage that one person can make a difference. As the American Society of International Law recently noted, she has done “path-breaking work as a lawyer, scholar, teacher and activist in international law and human rights, particularly in the areas of international labor law and workers’ rights.” Countless numbers of us have been profoundly inspired by her.
This week at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the American Society of International Law is honoring Virginia Leary with the Goler T. Butcher Medal for her outstanding contribution to human rights. It seems so fitting that she receive the medal pictured below right and named for my IntLawGrrls transnational foremother, Goler Teal Butcher. That's because both Virginia and Goler worked on economic and social rights as human rights long before many other rights activists in the U.S. did. And both have been leaders globally and mentors locally.

About Virginia Leary

Lawyer and professor. A former Vice-President of the American Society of International Law, Virginia Leary earned her J.D. degree from the University of Chicago, a doctoral degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and the diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law.

After working for an international women’s organization in Geneva, the Intercultural Cooperation Association, she worked for the International Labour Organization until joining the faculty of the State University of Buffalo and then the University of California-Hastings. Now that she is retired from full-time teaching and living in Geneva, she serves on the Advisory Board of the Program for the Study of International Organizations at the University of Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies, where she recently directed a project on the social aspects of trade liberalization.

Lawyer-Activist. Virginia Leary was a founding member of the Geneva-based International Council for Human Rights Policy, whose studies and reports I consider among the most useful work produced by a human rights organization. She has undertaken human rights missions on behalf of Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and Human Rights Watch, and has been a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She serves on the Boards of several organizations, including the Centre on Housing and Evictions (COHRE), Human Rights Advocates, and the International Labor Rights Forum, and previously served on the Board of Human Rights Watch Asia.

Scholar. A prolific scholar, she has written books, book chapters and articles on international labor law, workers’ rights, the right to health, child labor issues, and international trade and human rights. She recently co-edited the book Social Issues, Globalization and International Institution: Labour Rights and the EU, ILO, OECD and WTO.

Mentor and role model. Virginia Leary’s contribution to human rights also includes mentoring countless women and men in international human rights the world over, a role she has undertaken with care and energy reminiscent of Goler Teal Butcher.

About Goler Teal Butcher

When I first met Goler Butcher back in the mid-1980s, she was a member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International-USA (AIUSA) as well as Professor of Law at Howard University School of Law. I had the good fortune to work with Goler over the years on international legal issues as well as AI policy issues. It was when we roomed together for a week in Yokohama at Amnesty’s biennial policy-making meeting in 1991 that she shared some stories of her experiences as an African-American woman in the very white male world of international law in the early 1960s. I also learned from watching her in action at the Yokohama meeting, engaging with Amnesty delegates from around the world.

Goler Teal Butcher graduated in 1957 from the Howard University School of Law – where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Howard University Law Review. She was the only woman in her class. She earned her LL.M. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School the following year. She clerked for the first African American judge on a federal appeals court, the renowned William Henry Hastie.

After working for a law firm, she joined Office of the Legal Advisor at the Department of State in 1963, the first African-American lawyer to serve in that office. She then served as counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, where she earned a reputation for strong leadership. (In the photo at right, she's with U.S. Rep. Charles Diggs (D-Mich.); she was his 1st staff counsel for Africa when he resigned "from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in 1971 to protest Nixon administration support for South Africa and Portuguese colonialism.") Under President Carter, Butcher served as U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) director for Africa, and some years later, she headed the Clinton-Gore transition team for the agency.

Goler also devoted much care to her students and to her colleagues in the NGO community. She herself created the Goler Teal Butcher Award to attract students to the study of international law at Howard University. Today, the university honors her through its Goler Teal Butcher
International Moot Court Team, which this past year won the award for Best Complainant Submission in the Fourth Annual WTO Competition in Geneva.

She also touched us through her publications, which addressed U.S. foreign policy, apartheid, the relationship of law to the problem of hunger, discrimination in employment faced by women and by African-Americans, and issues of the United States and International Court of Justice advisory opinions, among other topics.

When she died in 1993, her successor to her position at USAID wrote:

Africa has lost a great champion. Washington has lost a giant.

On April 11, ...

...2002, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ireland, Jordan, Mongolia, Niger, Romania, and Slovakia deposited instruments of ratification of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. Sixty-six states thus having ratified, the ICC treaty entered into force on July 1, 2002, fewer than 4 years after its adoption at a diplomatic conference in Rome. Today the court has 104 states parties. Japan and Yemen recently have made significant steps toward, ratification; however, the parliament of Yemen recanted its initial "aye" vote just 2 days ago.
... 1919, the International Labour Organization was established, within the framework of the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles, "as an autonomous organization associated with the League of Nations." Though the League collapsed with the advent of World War II, the ILO remains active to this day.

Bittersweet chocolate

Note to every 2-legged Easter Rabbit (sorry, just can't go the PC "Spring Bunny" route) hopping about on last-minute errands: Today's purchase of inordinate amounts of chocolate is an occasion to think about the often bitter way the sweet stuff ends up in our shopping carts.
Was reminded of the "chocolate slavery" of thousands, in countries like Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, in the superb account of contemporary slavery that Dr. Kevin Bales, author of Disposable People and head of the NGO Free the Slaves, delivered at last week's American Society of International Law meeting (more on the panel tomorrow). Bales posited 1 way corporations now turning a blind eye might be held liable: reliance Supreme Court decisions, dating from the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction, that outlawed commercial transactions on proof of a likelihood that slavery was involved. Bales said that a constructive knowledge requirement, coupled with severe sanctions, would put industry on notice that there are consequences for trading in slavery-tainted chocolate -- and other slavery-tainted goods, like carpets.
Industry self-regulation does not seem to have taken hold. In 2001, 2 members of Congress negotiated the Harkin-Engel Protocol, by which industry agreed to end labor abuses and to establish a process for certifying that chocolate was not produced at the hands of children forced to work. "Alas, the chocolate industry has yet to develop certification," trade expert Susan Ariel Aaronson wrote in a recent commentary. But there have been changes in some states -- schools for children and payments to farmers who let children study rather than work, for example, as well as stepped-up enforcement of labor laws, at times with help from the International Labour Organization. Aaronson's conclusion echoed comments that Bales too had made:

Forced child labor and slavery will only stop when companies use their market power to prod their first-tier suppliers, who in turn will force their vendors not to rely on forced labor. But policymakers in the developing and industrialized world have an important role to play here, too. They must develop strategies that address the lack of opportunities, power and education that allow individuals to be enslaved.