Welcoming Rosemary Grey & Louise Chappell

It's our great pleasure to welcome Rosemary Grey (right) and Dr. Louise Chappell (left) as IntLawGrrls contributors.
► Rose is a doctoral researcher in the School of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She works on the topic of gender justice in international criminal law, focusing particularly on the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence at the International Criminal Court. A few months ago, Rose, about whom we've previously posted here, took part in in the 2012 Hague Symposium Post-Conflict Transitions & International Justice; in 2011, she was a Hague-based intern for the International Bar Association.
► Louise, about whom we've previously posted here, is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales (she is Rose's Ph.D. supervisor), as well as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. As reflected by her many publications, her primary research areas are women’s rights, gender and politics from a comparative and international perspective, public policy and federalism. She is working on a book on gender justice at the ICC, to be published by Oxford University Press.
Earlier this year, both Rose and Louise were involved in convening at the university an event on which we then posted: Justice for All? The International Criminal Court - A 10 year Review Conference on the ICC, as well as a workshop on Gender Justice and the ICC for delegates of women's organizations.
Their introductory post below is prompted by Thursday's announcement that the ICC has issued a warrant for the arrest of Simone Gbagbo, Vice President of the Ivorian Popular Front, a political party founded in 1982 by Laurent Gbagbo, who served as President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 until he – and she, his wife – were arrested. He has been in ICC custody for a year; it is not clear how the current CdI government will respond to the ICC warrant against her. In their post today, Rose and Louise consider the implications of the case against Simone Gbagbo, the 1st woman charged by the ICC; tomorrow, IntLawGrrls' 2-part series on women accused will feature a post in which guest contributor Mark Drumbl analyzes the recent conviction of the only woman prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Joining IntLawGrrls contributor Katie O'Byrne in their choice of a transnational foremother, Rosemary and Louise write:

Jessie Street at the United Nations

'We dedicate our entry to Jessie Street (1889-1970), an Australian activist, who was a prominent member of the international peace movement. Jessie founded the United Associations of Women, Australia in 1929 which was part of the International Alliance of Women, and which lobbied the League of Nations in Geneva on women's rights. As the sole woman on the Australian delegation to the 1945 founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco, Jessie was instrumental in having a permanent Commission on the Status of Women established within the United Nations, separate from the Human Rights Commission. She was CSW’s first Vice President.
'At home Jessie was an advocate for equality of status for women, equal pay, the rights of women to retain their jobs after marriage, appointment of women to public office and their election to Parliament. She was also worked to address the plight of Jewish refugees, and campaigned for the elimination of discrimination of Australia’s indigenous people.'

Heartfelt welcome!

On July 20

On this day in ...
... 1922 (90 years ago today), pursuant to Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, lands that Germany had controlled until its defeat in World War I were allotted to victorious Allied Powers. (credit for map showing German colonies circa 1913) For the most part it was France and Britain that were designated "mandatory authorities" charged with administering these African territories. Divided between them were areas formerly known as Togoland, Kamerun, and German East Africa. A small portion of that last territory would be mandated to Belgium the following year; a small triangle to the south of it was mandated to Portugal on this day. 

(Prior July 20 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

On July 12

On this day in ...

... 1920, meeting in London, the Council of the League of Nations unanimously approved a resolution authorizing appointment of a 3-member International Commission of Jurists charged with considering Sweden's bid to have the people of the Åland Islands – Swedish speakers living under Finnish sovereignty – determine by plebiscite whether they would be part of Sweden or Finland. (map credit) Specifically, the commission was to determine whether the matter was one of international concern or one that lay exclusively within Finland's domestic jurisdiction. In a decision familiar to all Public International Law students, the commission eventually held the question to be one of international concern. A subsequent commission then set forth the self-determination rights that the islanders must be afforded even though they were required to remain in Finland.

(Prior July 12 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Introducing Jihan A. Kahssay

It's my great pleasure to welcome a former student, Jihan A. Kahssay (left), as an IntLawGrrls contributor.
Jihan is a student at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, from which she expects to receive her J.D. degree at the end of this year. Jihan focuses her studies on international human rights and refugee law, and has just been honored as the 2012 recipient of the Pritikin Award for best student article submitted to the UC Davis Journal of International Law & Policy. Her paper, "Lessons Learned from Somalia: Returning to a Humanitarian-Based Humanitarian Intervention," will appear in a forthcoming edition of the journal.
Her family is originally from Eritrea, although she grew up in Saudi Arabia and Canada. For several months last year, Jihan worked in partnership with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees field office Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, assisting Eritrean and other refugees seeking resettlement. Jihan discusses lessons learned from that experience in her introductory post below.
She went to Ethiopia as a University of California-Davis Human Rights Fellow -- one of 2 last summer; the other was Joanna Cuevas Ingram, who also has contributed an IntLawGrrls post. In the summer after her 1st year of law school, Jihan worked for Legal Services of Northern California, as a King Hall Legal Foundation Fellow and Hogan Award Recipient. This summer, she will work as a research assistant for California-Davis Professor Leticia Saucedo.
Jihan dedicates her post to Zewditu I (below right), who reigned as Empress of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930. (photo credit) Jihan writes:

Empress Zewditu held the title of "The Queen of Kings," and was the first woman head of an internationally recognized state in Africa. Under her rule, Ethiopia entered the League of Nations and abolished slavery.

Today Zewditu joins other inspiring women in on IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers page.
Heartfelt welcome!

On January 24

On this day in ...
... 1920, according to an item entitled "POSTPONEMENT OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW" and published at 14 American Journal of International Law 382 (1920):

At the meeting of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law held in Washington on the 24th day of January, 1920, after very full discussion, the Council unanimously resolved that in view of the existing diplomatic situation, it was expedient to postpone the general meeting of the Society for the year 1920, until a time when general discussion of international questions that are of active public interest may be useful rather than embarrassing.
Timely notice of the postponed meeting will be given.

Elihu Root,
President.

Reason for this extraordinary measure? Presumably, an event that had occurred just days earlier: the failure to reach a compromise by which the Senate would have given its advice and consent to the Versailles Treaty and, thus, to the League of Nations Covenant. (credit for undated photo of Root)

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

On October 20

On this day in ...
... 1921 (90 years ago today), the Convention relating to the Non-Fortification and Neutralisation of the Aaland Islands was concluded in Geneva, Switzerland. At issue was Åland, the group of islands in the circle at right. (map credit) Inhabitants are ethnically Swedish; however, for historical reasons that Dr. Teija Tiilikainen (right), Director of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, detailed in her study entitled "Åland in European security policy," the islands nonetheless were located within the political boundaries of Finland. Earlier in 1921, a commission appointed by the League of Nations had ruled that Åland would remain part of Finland but would enjoy significant autonomy. This treaty followed, as a means to international guarantees that Åland would be neutral and demilitarized. The 1921 treaty has 10 states parties: Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Poland, and Sweden. As our colleague Edith Brown Weiss noted in "Legacies of Louis B. Sohn: The United Nations Charter and International Environmental Law," 16 Willamette J. Int’l & Dispute Res. 212, 219 (2008), the Åland Convention played a key role in the drafting of U.N. Charter Article 51, which concerns states' use of force in self-defense.

(Prior October 20 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On April 17

On this day in ...
... 1946 (65 years ago today), Syria won independence from France, which had exercised a League of Nations-approved mandate over it since shortly after World War I. Nationalist movements had agitated for independence for most of the interim decades. This day is a public holiday in Syria (flag at left).

(Prior April 17 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On April 8

On this day in ...
... 1946 (65 years ago today), the League of Nations held its last meeting, 25-1/2 years after its initial session in Geneva, Switzerland. The alliance had foundered with the onset and onslaught of World War II. The United Nations Organization, established by dint of the San Francisco Charter, would assume the intergovernmental security tasks that the League had been designed to discharge.

(Prior April 8 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On January 10

On this day in ...
... 1946 (65 years ago today), in London, the U.N. General Assembly met for the 1st time ever. (credit for U.N. photo of British Prime Minister Clement Atlee giving an opening address) The lead of The New York Times' page 1 story, written by James B. Reston, captured the significance of this post-World War II event:

The fifty-one nations of the greatest war-time coalition in history, representing four-fifths of the people in the world, started today another chapter in man's melancholy search for peace and security.
One hundred and forty-seven days after the close of the war that cost more than 20,000,000 casualties and left countless millions homeless, and on the twenty-sixth
anniversary of the ratification of the ill-fated League of Nations Covenant, the nations met this afternoon in the blue and gold auditorium of the Central Hall of Westminster ....

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

On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1945 (65 years ago today), Gabriela Mistral addressed a banquet at City Hall in Stockholm, where earlier in the day she'd been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She stressed the bonds between Sweden and her own country:

As a daughter of Chilean democracy, I am moved to have before me a representative of the Swedish democratic tradition, a tradition whose originality consists in perpetually renewing itself within the framework of the most valuable creations of society. ...
At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune, I am the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues. Both rejoice to have been invited to this festival of Nordic life with its tradition of centuries of folklore and poetry.

Mistral (prior posts), who'd been born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga 56 years earlier, was not only a renowned poet, but also a diplomat, serving on League of Nations cultural committee and as a Chilean consul in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. (credit for photo of 5,000-peso note honoring her) She's the transnational foremother of IntLawGrrl Naomi Roht-Arriaza.

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

Treaties no treat?

What to make of Jamie Rubin's blithe Farewell to the Age of the Treaty?
In an op-ed yesterday Rubin, a State Department spokesperson back when Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State, posited that treaties aren't "even worth the trouble anymore."
The "trouble," it appears, is not with international agreements themselves. Troublesome, rather, is securing 2/3 consent of the Senate, a constitutional sine qua non for U.S. ratification of a treaty. The requirement's now bedeviling President Barack Obama's bid for ratification, detailed here, of the U.S.-Russia New Start disarmament treaty. (prior posts) (credit for White House photo of April 2010 signing)
"'Fortunately, there is an alternative,'" Rubin breezed. He argued that statutes, which pass upon simple majorities of both houses of Congress, usually "will work just fine."
Even putting aside the glib assertion that "the international system has most of the rules it needs," Rubin's argument falters on a number of points:
► History: The op-ed's ahistorical in its implication that this is a new problem. Presidential struggles to clear the 2/3 Senate hurdle are "nothing new," as our Opinio Juris colleague Duncan Hollis pointed out. Failure to secure approval dates at least to President Woodrow Wilson, and the Senate's rejections of the Versailles Treaty (right) and the League of Nations Covenant, in 1919 and again in 1920 -- years surely within the putative "Age of Treaties." Rubin himself no doubt recalls President Bill Clinton's CTBT debacle back in 1999.
► Politics: Also implicit is an assumption that congressional majorities easily may be obtained. Rubin points to legislative efforts on climate change as an example of his position "already being used." He pretermits, however, that these efforts have yet to bear statutory fruit. Given that the New Year will inaugurate a House of Representatives with a heavy GOP lean, getting Congress to okay internationally aimed reforms would seem far from simple.
► International Relations: Rubin's solution seems unlikely to give U.S. status abroad the hefty boost he suggests. Statutes and treaties are quite different legal animals. A statute may be altered, even repealed, at any time. Preferring the legislative path thus adds instability to the United States' foreign relations. What's more, a statute is the unilateral enactment of a single sovereign. In contrast, a treaty embodies that sovereign's consent not just to act, but to do so out of an international obligation. Treaties represent a deeper level of commitment, a promise to pursue global cooperation even if domestic political winds shift. Opting always for the U.S. statutory fix, at a time when other countries are urged to join treaty regimes, seems unlikely to ease what Rubin rightly calls "international frustration with American leadership."
Hard to see the op-ed's effort -- in essence, to put a brave face on an inferior option -- as much more than advance spin should New Start founder in the Senate.

On February 16

On this day in ...
... 1933, in Geneva, Switzerland, the foreign ministers of Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia signed the Pacte d'organisation de la Petite Entente, aimed at strengthening economic and political ties among the 3 Central European countries. The treatymakers pledged to act consistently with international instruments, chief among them the Covenant of the League of Nations.

(Prior February 16 posts are here, here, and here)

On February 6

On this day in ...
... 1946, the judges of the League 0f Nations-era Permanent Court of International Justice having resigned days earlier, election of the 1st members of the International Court of Justice took place at the 1st session of the United Nations' General Assembly and Security Council. Judge José Gustavo Guerrero (left) of El Salvador, the last President of the PCIJ, would be elected the ICJ's President in April; a month later, the new court would get its 1st case, Corfu Channel.

(Prior February 6 posts are here and here.)

On December 29

On this day in ...
... 1934 (75 years ago today), U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull expressed "genuine regret" at receiving Japan's formal notice of its renunciation of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, in which Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States had agreed to limit armaments on their naval vessels. (credit for image of diplomats at 1922 Washington Naval Conference) The withdrawal came 21 months after Japan had quit the League of Nations (prior posts here and here).


(Prior December 29 posts are here and here.)

Toward a Definition of Terrorism

As we discussed in an earlier post, the ICC does not assert jurisdiction over terrorism, in part because drafters believed that the crime was not adequately defined under international law. Since the attacks of 9/11, this may be changing.
Terrorism is a concept with a colloquial meaning that lacks a formal consensus definition under international law. An omnibus treaty definition of the crime of terrorism has eluded the international community to date largely because of the now trite adage: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” As a result of this normative ambivalence, codification efforts have yielded a number of treaties that require states to criminalize only specific terrorist acts (such as aircraft hijacking or attacks against internationally protected persons), but no truly omnibus definition.

The League of Nations embarked on the first major attempt in the modern era to prohibit the crime of terrorism after the 1934 assassination by Croatian separatists of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and others. The treaty—the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism (1937)—defined terrorism as follows:

All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.

The treaty attracted 24 state signatories; only India ultimately ratified the Convention. The onset of World War II scuttled any further efforts to bring the treaty into effect. After the dissolution of the League of Nations, the treaty was never revived.

From this abortive start, the international community has proceeded in a piecemeal fashion by criminalizing various manifestations of terrorism (such as offenses committed on board aircraft, crimes against internationally protected persons, hostage taking, crimes involving maritime navigation, crimes involving nuclear material, and the financing of terrorism), often in response to particular terrorist incidents.
This proliferation of treaty instruments has led some courts and commentators to conclude that there is no established definition of terrorism under customary international law. Nonetheless, many definitions of terrorism share certain basic elements from which a more general prohibition may be identified:

► The perpetration of violence by enumerated or unenumerated means;
► The targeting of innocent civilians or elements of the civilian infrastructure;
► Conduct is undertaken:

1. With the intent to cause violence or with wanton disregard for the act’s consequences;
2. For the purpose of causing fear or terror, coercing a government, or intimidating an enemy; or
3. To achieve some political, military, ideological, or religious goal.

Many instruments and penal codes thus contain one or more specific intent or motive elements requiring proof of the existence of some mental state over and above the general intent to commit acts of violence. In some cases, this mental element is aimed at the civilian population (the intent to cause terror) or a government (the intent to influence a government). This emphasis on the perpetrator’s motive markedly distinguishes crimes of terrorism from other domestic and international crimes. (The more specific the actus reus of the treaty, however, the less likely that such a surplus of intent is required).

In addition to sharing certain definitional elements, many treaties share structural components that obligate state parties to

► incorporate the relevant prohibitions into their domestic criminal codes,
► treat enumerated acts of terrorism as extraditable offenses,
► grant mutual legal assistance in the investigation and prosecution of the proscribed acts, and
► either extradite or prosecute offenders pursuant to broad principles of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

In this regard, the crimes of terrorism have been largely reponsible for the greater acceptance of passive personality jurisdiction in international law, as states increasingly assert jurisdiction over extraterritorial acts of terrorism committed against their nationals.

Many multilateral instruments also limit their application to terrorism committed by non-state actors, implicitly or explicitly failing to recognize any notion of state terrorism. Other treaties limit their application to acts of “international terrorism,” thus excluding jurisdiction over acts of terrorism committed by sub-state actors operating solely within a single state.

The 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism in certain respects unifies these various terrorism treaties and comes closest to an omnibus treaty definition of terrorism. Article 2(1) of that treaty incorporates a number of extant treaties in its annex by providing:

Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person by any means, directly or indirectly, unlawfully and wilfully, provides or collects funds with the intention that they should be used or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out [any violation of an annexed treaty].

In addition, the treaty prohibits

[a]ny other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.

The Financing Convention is bolstered by a Chapter VII Security Council Resolution (1373) passed in the weeks following the attacks of September 11, 2001, requiring all states to, inter alia, suppress the financing of acts of terrorism and freeze financial assets of persons or entities involved in terrorism.

As noted in an earlier post, terrorism is not at present a crime within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Nonetheless, given the normative redundancy in international criminal law, the Court could adjudicate certain acts that one might also consider acts of terrorism within its existing subject matter jurisdiction when such acts of terrorism satisfy the elements of other international crimes:

► Violent acts (such as murder, torture, or kidnapping) that specifically target civilians in the context of an armed conflict—whether international or non-international—will likely constitute war crimes.
► Where such acts are committed within the context of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, they may constitute crimes against humanity under Article 7 (whether or not they are committed within the context of an armed conflict). The definition of crimes against humanity in the ICC Statute requires proof that the attack was “pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack” (Article 7(2)(a)). Presumably, many terrorist groups could be shown to possess such a policy to attack civilians.
► Terrorist attacks may also implicate the prohibition against genocide, where the acts target a protected group with the intent to destroy that group. Although there are many instances of acts of terrorism being directed against a protected group (such as those committed during “the troubles” in Northern Ireland (right) or even the attacks of September 11, 2001), it may be difficult to prove the specific intent to commit genocide as opposed to the intent to intimidate or coerce a government—the hallmark of terrorism.

It is worth considering what is left for a prohibition against terrorism to address if many violent acts already constitute either war crimes or crimes against humanity under international criminal law.

► For one, isolated or exceptional violent acts, committed in times of peace (or without any nexus to an armed conflict) and absent more systemic repression might not be considered a war crime or a crime against humanity. Prosecuting such acts at the international level or under international law would require the existence of a stand-alone crime of terrorism.

► Secondly, a prohibition against terrorism may aid in the prosecution of acts of violence committed against privileged combatants by unprivileged combatants (such as civilians directly participating in hostilities or peacetime attacks on members of the armed forces (Khobar Towers below)). Such acts do not constitute war crimes. If such acts are to implicate international criminal law, as opposed to the domestic law of either the territorial state or the state of the nationality of the victim (assuming this law applies extraterritorially), the international community will have to achieve consensus on an omnibus definition of terrorism.

In the past, a number of geo-political situations involving occupying, colonial, or racist regimes prevented this consensus from forming. Fortunately, many of these situations (such as South Africa) have been resolved in favor of the principle of self-determination. The situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, however, remains one of the few obstacles to completing the remaining definitional work on the crime of terrorism. Many members of the international community are unwilling to unequivocally condemn all acts of violence committed by Palestinian and allied forces given the perceived justness of their cause. That said, a consensus is crystallizing around the judgment that acts of violence targeting civilians are never justified, regardless of the justness of the cause in question. By contrast, the legal categorization and consequences of attacks by unprivileged combatants against privileged combatants or military objectives remains an unsettled and highly contentious area of international law.

Resolving the situation in this part of the world would remove this distortion in the normative development of international criminal law—as if we needed another reason to accomplish this critical and elusive end.

(This discussion is drawn from my recent article on the cognizability of a tort of terrorism under the Alien Tort Statute, produced for a conference on civil litigation and terrorism at the University of Texas (Austin). The article appears in The Review of Litigation, a publication devoted to the theory and practice of litigation, and is available here).

On October 6

On this day in ...
... 1937, the League of Nations "adopted a resolution censuring Japan" for its aggression in China, "and inviting members to give China what aid they could -- recommending, however, 'further efforts to secure the restoration of peace by agreement.'" Sanctions would follow the next year; however, since Japan had withdrawn from the League long before, and so the resolution had no effect.

(Prior October 6 posts are here and here.)

On July 20

On this day in ...
... 1921, Alice Mary Robertson (near left) became the 1st woman to preside over the U.S. House of Representatives. Having been elected by Oklahoma voters, on March 4 of the same year she'd become the 2d woman ever to serve in Congress (the 1st was Jeannette Rankin, another Republican, about whom we've posted). Of Robertson's politics it's been written:

She opposed feminist groups like the League of Women Voters and the National Women's Party, and voted against bills funding maternity and childcare on the grounds that they were an unwarranted governmental intrusion on personal rights. This earned her the support of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of which she was a member.

(See also Louise Boyd James, “Alice Mary Robertson -- Anti-Feminist Congresswoman,” 55 Chronicles of Oklahoma 454 (Winter 1977-1978).) Robertson served only 1 term, losing her bid for re-election to the incumbent she'd ousted 2 years later. It would not be until the election of Republican Mary Fallin in 2006 that Oklahomans would send another woman to Congress. (credit for 1923 photo of Robertson with 2 later-arriving Representatives, Winnifred Huck (R-Ill.), far left, and Mae Ella Nolan (I-Calif.), center)
... 1940, having been occupied by Nazi Germany in April, Denmark withdrew from the League of Nations.

(Prior July 20 posts are here and here.)

On July 13

On this day in ...
… 1878, the Treaty of Berlin, the final act of the Congress of Berlin, was signed by Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. As a result, a Balkan crisis ended, and Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania became completely independent of the Ottoman Empire. Additionally, the treaty granted special legal status to some religious groups and served as a model for the minorities system that was subsequently established within the framework of the League of Nations. (credit for map of South-Eastern Europe after the Congress of Berlin)
… 1973, Alexander Butterfield, a deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon, revealed the existence of tapes to the special Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in. Nixon had recorded almost every meeting in his White House offices since 1971 -- the tapes would prove vital in documenting that high-ranking officials had been involved in a cover up and other illegal activities. After a series of court battles, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in United States v. Nixon (1974) that the President had to hand over the tapes; he ultimately complied. In recent weeks, many tapes have been made newly available to the public. (credit for July 30, 1973, cover of Newsweek)

(Prior July 13 posts are here and here.)

On June 19

On this day in ...
… 1961, Kuwait declared independence from the United Kingdom. Back in 1899, Britain had concluded a protectorate agreement with the ruler of Kuwait (flag at left). In it the ruler promised not to conclude treaties with other powers, to admit no foreign agents, and to cede no part of his territory without British consent. According to the independence agreement concluded on this day in 1961, relations between the 2 countries should continue to be governed by a spirit of close friendship, and, when appropriate, the 2 governments would consult on matters of concern to them both.

… 1939 (70 years ago today), Grace Abbott (below right), American social reformer, teacher, and writer, died in Chicago, Illinois. Concerned about the low pay and long hours required of children working in factories, Abbott became a leader in the fight for federal children's rights legislation. As associate of Jane Addams, Nobel Peace Prizewinner and IntLawGrrls transnational foremother, Abbott served as head of the Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor from 1921 to 1934. She was the official representative of the United States on the League of Nations' advisory committees on traffic in women and on child welfare from 1922 to 1934. Upon her resignation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described her career as one of

inestimable value to the children, the mothers, and fathers of the country, as well as to the Federal and State governments.

From 1934 until her death, Abbott continued working for social welfare as a professor at the University of Chicago and as chair of international labor conferences and state committees dealing with child labor. (photo credit)

(Prior June 19 posts are here and here.)

On February 6

On this day in...
... 2000, Tarja Kaarina Halonen was elected Finland’s President. Halonen (left), who had served as the country's Minister of Foreign Affairs since 1995, holds the top post to this day. Just this past Sunday, another woman became leader of a nearby country: Johanna Sigurdardottir is Prime Minister of Iceland. In the words of the BBC, Sigurdardottir (below right) "is the first openly lesbian head of government in Europe, if not the world -- at least in modern times."
... 1946, the judges of the League-of-Nations-founded Permanent Court of International Justice all having resigned 6 days earlier, elections were held for the 1st members of the International Court of Justice, during the 1st session of the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council.