On December 11

On this day in ...

... 1946, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 57(I), "Establishment of an International Children's Emergency Fund." The resolution aimed initially at helping "children and adolescents of countries which were victims of aggression" in the recently ended Second World War. Over time, of course, the mandate of the Fund – known today by its acronym, UNICEF – expanded to include all children throughout the world. On this very same day in 1965, when UNICEF was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the organization was praised for the results it had achieved:

'Differences of view have been welded, almost always, into an accepted concensus in the search for agreement on the best methods of providing assistance to alleviate the agony of children who are victims of cruel circumstance.'

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

On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1931, the Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Jane Addams; she was a co-winner with Nicholas Murray Butler. Nobel Committee Chair Halvdan Koht said in his presentation speech:

(credit)

'America helped – perhaps it would be more correct to say compelled – Europe to create a League of Nations which would provide a firm basis for peaceful coexistence among nations. It was a crushing blow that America herself did not join this organization, and without doubt her failure to do so contributed largely to the failure of the League of Nations to live up to expectations. We still see too much of the old rivalries of power politics. Had the United States joined, she would have been a natural mediator between many of the conflicting forces in Europe, for America is more interested in peace in Europe than in lending her support to any particular country.
'It must be said, however, that the United States is not the power for peace in the world that we should have wished her to be. She has sometimes let herself drift into the imperialism which is the natural outcome of industrial capitalism in our age. In many ways she is typical of the wildest form of capitalist society, and this has inevitably left its mark on American politics.
'But America has at the same time fostered some of the most spirited idealism on earth.'

A longtime advocate of peace, suffrage, and measures to alleviate poverty, Addams was emblematic of that idealism – of "the work which women can do peace fraternity among nations," Koht continued. But Addams, who was then 71 years old, was admitted to a hospital in Baltimore on this day in 1931, and so was unable to attend the ceremony in Oslo, Norway. She would die 4 years later in the city where she had long lived, Chicago. We IntLawGrrls honor her as a transnational foremother.

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

How to "fix that" United States elections process

(Final part of a 4-part series comparing voting in the United States and Venezuela, in light of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here.)

President Lyndon Johnson & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1965

In the United States, citizens must continue to advocate vigorously to hold on to landmark historic voting rights protections and inclusionary guarantees.
For example, consider a controversial case soon to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Entitled Shelby County v. Holder, the case, arising out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, represents a challenge to the constitutionality of the preclearance provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – provisions that require jurisdictions with a documented history of discrimination to obtain approval from the federal government before changing their election procedures.
For over 40 years, the Voting Rights Act has been upheld as constitutional. The Act worked to ensure historically disenfranchised minorities' increased participation in U.S. elections, and was reauthorized in 1970, 1975, 1982, and again, unanimously by a Republican Congress in 2006, during the administration of President George W. Bush.
Now, the most effective civil rights law in U.S. history faces an unprecedented challenge with Shelby County, which puts at stake the constitutionality of the VRA under the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the U.S. Constitution.
As Corey Dade of NPR has recalled, the preclearance provisions are still quite relevant in 2012, given that federal courts applied the preclearance provisions to block voter identification requirements in Texas, and other procedural electoral changes, ahead of the U.S. general election on November 6.
Similarly, California-Irvine Law Professor Rick Hasen, an election law expert, said :

'There is still evidence of unconstitutional conduct as found this year in the Texas redistricting case ... There certainly is some evidence of continued racial discrimination in voting, although it is far less common than in the 1960s. And when it occurs, it is more subtle. Section 5 has served to be an important bargaining chip.'

Indeed, many voting rights advocates point to the support that U.N. Under-Secretary-General Ralph Bunche provided Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement during the 1960s, which ultimately turned up the pressure on President Lyndon Baines Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Bunche, winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize  on account of his diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, had participated in the 1963 March on Washington. In a public statement at the Montgomery Statehouse during the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, he said that the United Nations supported the civil rights movement in the United States:

'In the UN, we have known from the beginning that secure foundations for peace in the world can be built only upon the principle and practice of equal rights and status for all peoples, respect and dignity for all.'

This resonated for me during my October service as an elections observer in Venezuela. While there, as depicted at left, I had the opportunity to meet the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Rigoberta Menchú Tum. An indomitable indigenous rights advocate, she too was part of the International Accompaniment that observed voter access and participation. (photo courtesy of CUNY Professor Ron Hayduk) Menchú’s lifework reminded me of why it is so important to stay vigilant in the protection of these civil rights both at home and abroad.
Much work remains to be done.
 As I posted in Part 1 of this series, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prizewinner, U.S. President Barack Obama, said of U.S. voting-rights issues during his November 6 victory speech:

'We have to fix that.'

On November 25

On this day in ...
... 1867 (145 years ago today), Alfred Nobel patented dynamite. Born in Sweden 34 years earlier, Nobel had begun his career as an industrialist, a maker of bridges and other structures – the construction of which often required blasting through rock, a requirement that led Nobel to the experiments out of which dynamite was created. On this day he secured U.S. patent number 78,317 for his invention, the destructive power of which he continued to improve. ( photo credit) Used in times of war and peace alike, the invention left him with an immense fortune. In the will he signed on this same date in 1895 in Paris (28 years to the day after he'd obtained the patent), Nobel funded the establishment of annual Nobel Prizes, to be apportioned as follows:

'one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.'

This development was due in no small part to an abundance of correspondence with Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner (right), who worked briefly as a secretary for Nobel, and then, as detailed in this fascinating account, wrote Nobel frequently, advocating her campaign for global peace. (photo credit) In 1905, 9 years after Nobel's death, she would become the 1st woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

(Prior November 25 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Again with the Nobel gauntlet

Gauntlets cast on the ground before England's King Richard II

The European Union is the latest to have a gauntlet cast in its path.
Yesterday's announcement in Oslo that the EU had won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize included these words:

'The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.
'... Over a seventy-year period, Germany and France had fought three wars. Today war between Germany and France is unthinkable. This shows how, through well-aimed efforts and by building up mutual confidence, historical enemies can become close partners.

'... The division between East and West has to a large extent been brought to an end; democracy has been strengthened; many ethnically-based national conflicts have been settled.'

These rosy paragraphs call to mind a release 3 years ago, when the same committee bestowed the same prize on President Barack Obama, citing "his extraordinary efforts," in his initial 9 months in office, "to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." I wrote then that the award was deserved, and listed the administration's sundry efforts to mend diplomatic fences. Yet there's no question that the prize threw a gauntlet Obama's way – a challenge to stay the path of peace. In a fascinating article published in this month's Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis quoted Obama's reaction to the prize:

"'It’s one of the most shocking things that has happened in all of this. And I immediately anticipated that it would cause me problems.'"

(credit Susan Walsh/AP photo)

The president, who had been making ready to send more troops to Afghanistan, responded by tossing the glove back at the Europe-based committee. In the Nobel Lecture delivered when he accepted the prize (right), Obama drew on just war theory, declaring:

'We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.' 

Dilemma likewise is present with yesterday's award.
Europe's recession has spurred harsh measures in some eurozone countries, like Ireland, and stiff opposition in others, like Greece. Tensions have given rise to slurs one would have hoped never again to hear: a German colleague's 2011 reference to others of the EU's 27 countries by a certain acronym – PIGS – still grates. Even within countries, there is unrest, as a recent New York Times story illustrated. And as Le Monde pointed out yesterday, it's to be noted that the country that plays host to this Nobel committee, Norway, has chosen not to join the European Union.
To its credit, the yesterday's Nobel release acknowledged this. "The EU is currently undergoing grave economic difficulties and considerable social unrest," the statement said. It expressed hope that by this award the committee could train "focus on what it sees as the EU's most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights."
It is for Europe now to decide what to do with its gauntlet.

Look on! In Guatemala, Mountains Tremble

(Part 1 of a 2-part Look On! series of posts; Part 2 is here.)

When the Mountains Tremble (1983) is an incredible documentary.
It tells the story of state repression, under the leadership of General Efraín Ríos Montt, of indigenous populations in Guatemala during the 1980s. The filmmaker is Pamela Yates (bottom right) of Skylight Pictures, an IntLawGrrls contributor.

(credit)

Narrating this documentary about the war on Guatemala's Mayan population is Rigoberta Menchú (left). Then in her early 20s, Menchú would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.
Mountains bravely uncovers the role of the United States in facilitating, for its own trade purposes, military rule in Guatemala. Liberal capitalism and free trade promoted by the United States, the film tells us, led to the dispossession of local populations. Footage from both Guatemalan and US television is presented – including a statement of then-President Ronald Reagan, in which he calls on businesses to

'be bold and spread American enterprise throughout the hemisphere'.

Beyond asserting US responsibility in providing finance and weapons to the Guatemalan military, Mountains also looks at the complicity of religious organizations in a massacre. Following repression of some priests within the Catholic Church, evangelical groups from the US began to arrive.

(credit)

Throughout the story, we witness the organization of el pueblo guatemalteco, the people of Guatemala. It is these people who star in this film, risking their lives to tell the stories of repression and mass human rights violations. We see training exercises of the guerrillas, the activism of young men and young women who wish to protect their people and who strive for equality.
This powerful documentary, exploring the multifaceted factors which lead to genocide and human rights violations, currently can be viewed free online at PBS here. 
In my post tomorrow, I'll review Yates' 2011 sequel to this film – another documentary, entitled Granito.

(Cross-posted at Human Rights Film Diary blog)

Introducing Anne Orford

It's our great pleasure today to welcome as an IntLawGrrls contributor Dr. Anne Orford (left), Michael D. Kirby Professor of International Law and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She also served for many years as the law school's Foundation Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.
We're especially pleased to welcome Anne this week:
Tomorrow, at Sweden's Lund Cathedral, Lund University will give her an honorary doctorate in law

'for her research that releases international law into its full intellectual, political and emancipatory complexity.'

(The other honoree will be Marianne Lundius, President of Sweden's Supreme Court and the 1st woman to hold that position.)
A scholar in many aspects of international law – international trade law, law and development, legal history, legal theory, and post-colonial theory – Anne's been awarded 2 Australian Research Council fellowships, the current one for a 3-year project entitled "From Famine to Food Security: The Role of International Law." She's visited as a teacher or researcher at many universities, among them Lund and Gothenburg in Sweden and Harvard and NYU in the United States. In Germany last month, she presented the Rechtskulturen lecture hosted by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and Humboldt University Law School.
Anne earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Queensland, the Australian state where she's admitted to practice as a solicitor; a master's degree in public international law from the University of London; and a Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide, which also awarded her the Bonython Prize for the best postgraduate law thesis.
Among her many publications is International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (2011). Anne drew on that work for her presentation at "Military Intervention and the Law of Peace," the plenary panel that opened the March 2012 annual meeting of the American Society of International Law. Patricia O'Brien, the Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs and the U.N. Legal Counsel already has honored us by contributing her remarks at that panel as an IntLawGrrls post. Today Anne does the same. Her introductory post below, as well as her post tomorrow, make up a 2-part exploration of the significance of a concept about which IntLawGrrls frequently have posted, the responsibility to protect.
Anne dedicates her contribution as follows:

'In terms of a transnational foremother, and in the spirit of receiving an honorary doctorate from Sweden, I would like to propose Alva Myrdal – a feminist intellectual who is now treated as one of the major architects of the Swedish welfare state. Myrdal's activism, scholarship, and policy development were based upon a deep-seated conviction that social planning based upon factual knowledge and explicitly articulated values is not only desirable, but also necessary, if the modern state is to be made hospitable for women and children.

'In 1949, at the invitation of the Norwegian Secretary-General Trygve Lie, Myrdal became head of the UN's Department of Social Affairs ­ the highest-placed woman in any international organisation. In that role, she worked on issues including population, human rights, refugees, and the status of women. From 1950 to 1955, Myrdal chaired the Division of Social Sciences at UNESCO. By 1953, Myrdal had begun to voice her concerns that development under UN auspices had become a field for outsiders enforcing American-financed development projects that required large capital outlays and bore little relation to the values and knowledge of local communities.
Myrdal left the UN to serve as Swedish Ambassador to India, Burma, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Nepal from 1955 to 1961. During that period, she became a close friend and political ally of the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
'She is perhaps most famous for her later work on disarmament, ­as Swedish Ambassador to the Geneva disarmament negotiations, the Swedish Cabinet Minister for Disarmament (1966-1973), and the author of The Game of Disarmament (1976), ­ for which she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.'

Myrdal (photo credit), who died in 1986 in Stockholm, the day after her 84th birthday, joins other inspiring women on IntLawGrrls' foremothers page.

Heartfelt welcome!

Introducing Lindsay M. Harris

It's my great pleasure to introduce a former student of mine, Lindsay M. Harris (left), as an IntLawGrrls contributor.
Lindsay is an Akin Gump Equal Justice Works Fellow and Immigration Staff Attorney at the Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., offices of the Tahirih Justice Center. Lindsay leads the Tahirih Justice Center's African Women’s Empowerment Project. She also teaches Refugee and Asylum Law as an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.
Her introductory post below draws from both these experiences: reflecting on a quiz she gave to law students, she discusses the efforts of the African Women's Empowerment Project to litigate gender-based asylum claims on behalf of African immigrant girls and women. Lindsay concludes by suggesting a legislative change that might ease difficulties that the current state of the law poses to such claims.
A 2009 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Lindsay was an excellent student in the Civ Pro II class I taught while a visiting Professor of Law there. Her exemplary law school record includes: receipt in 2009 of the Sax Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy, for her participation in Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Clinic and the East Bay Community Law Center’s Health and Immigration Unit; work with Lawyers for Human Rights and the Forced Migration Studies Program in South Africa, and with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law; leadership of the California Asylum Representation Clinic and the Boalt Hall Committee for Human Rights; and service as Symposium Editor and Senior Articles Editor for the Berkeley Journal of International Law. In 2009, Lindsay published an article on gender-based asylum claims in South Africa; in 2010, a co-authored article on gang-related asylum claims in the United States.
After graduation, Lindsay was a law clerk for Judge Harry Pregerson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where she focused on immigration and asylum law. Prior to law school, she'd been as Managing Director of a fair trade non-profit organization, working with artisans in seven African countries.
Lindsay dedicates her posts to Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai (right), the 2004 Nobel Peace laureate who passed away last September, 71 years after her birth in a village in Kenya. (photo credit) Lindsay writes:

'She was a true visionary and activist who understood the important connections between so many of the world’s problems today, including human rights, the environment, and governance.'

Today Maathai (prior posts) joins the many other women honored 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 December 23

On this day in ...
... 1986 (25 years ago today), the 1975 Nobel Peace laureate and "most prominent Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov ... arrived with his wife and co-activist Yelena Bonner to a crowd of journalists and the public gathered at Moscow's railway station." Their arrival put an end to nearly 7 years of forced internal exile in the "closed city" then known as Gorky; today, Nizhny Novgorod. Criticism of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan had prompted the banishment. (credit for 1986 photo of the couple) As we've posted, Sakharov, who died in 1989, and Bonner, who died this past June, both continued to campaign for human rights for the rest of their lives.

(Prior December 23 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1961 (50 years ago today), the President of the African National Congress, Albert Lutuli, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for 1960. The ceremony at the University of Oslo, Norway, "saw some 'firsts.'" It was the 1st time a laureate's spouse -- Lutuli's wife, Nokukhanya Bhengu -- was invited to the platform. And it was also the 1st time that a laureate sang -- in Zulu, the anthem Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika. In his Nobel lecture, the 62-year-old activist and advocate of nonviolence recounted government-committed massacres like that in Sharpeville on March 1960 (prior IntLawGrrls posts here and here). Lutuli derided South Africa's apartheid regime as a "a hangover from the dark past of mankind," and urged all of

'Africa to cast her eyes beyond the past and to some extent the present, with their woes and tribulations, trials and failures, and some successes, and see herself an emerging continent, bursting to freedom through the shell of centuries of serfdom.'

Afterward, according to the BBC, the Foreign Minister of apartheid South Africa "condemned" the lecture as "'propaganda and incitement in Europe.'" (credit for above right photo of Lutuli, and for photo at left of Bhengu, made at a 1977 ceremony marking 10 years after her husband was killed in a train crash)

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

On October 12

On this day in ...
... 2001 (10 years ago today), the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize would go to the United Nations and to Kofi Annan, the man then serving as its Secretary-General. (credit for photo of Annan, far left, and U.N. General Assembly President Han Seung-soo, near left, at December 2001 awards ceremony) Underscoring that this would be the 100th year of awarding the prize, the Committee's chairman, as reported by The New York Times,

stressed that the body 'wishes in its centenary year to proclaim that the only negotiable route to global peace and cooperation goes by way of the United Nations.'

Peace Prizes also awarded to United Nations officials/subunits over the years: 1961, posthumously to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld; 1954 and 1981, to the U.N.High Commissioner for Refugees; 1965, to UNICEF; and 1988, to U.N. peacekeepers.

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

Look On! Women, war, peace

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy productions.)

Tonight will air the 1st episodes of a new series, Women, War & Peace, on many Public Broadcasting Service television stations.
According to the website, the 5 parts will run from now through early November. It will look at a number of conflicts, including in Bosnia, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Colombia. Among the persons featured (along with various Hollywood types) is Leymah Gbowee, who, as posted, was a co-winner last week of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.
Check local listings for times in your area. The DVD is available here.
Can only hope this series is well done -- though a post dated October 3 on the home page of the series' rather confusing website gives pause.
The title of the post?
"What's Your Favorite Book on Women in War?"
As if being caught up in armed conflict were some kind of literary opportunity.
PBS ought to know, and do, better.

Peace-builders

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize goes to 2 Liberians, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (below left) and Leymah Gbowee (below right), and to Tawakul Karman of Yemen (left). (credit for photos courtesy of the Nobel site)
The statement on the Nobel Committee's website honors the women

'for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.'

Achievements of these laureates:
► Johnson Sirleaf, as we've posted, is the 1st woman to have been elected President of a country in Africa. She's guided her country through difficult times in the aftermath of decades of war presided over by her immediate predecessor, Charles Taylor, who's now in custody at The Hague, awaiting the verdict of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Johnson Sirleaf, 72, is now in a tough re-election campaign.
► Gbowee, 39, is the Executive Director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, a Ghana-based organization about which we've posted. In Liberia, she founded a women's peace organization that helped to bring civil war to an end.
► Karman (prior post), a 32-year-old journalist and activist mother of 3 children, is the 1st Arab woman to win the prize. She's a leader of the "Arab Spring" pro-democracy movement -- a movement in which, as we've posted, Yemeni women have played a key role.
Asked to comment on Karman's honor, another woman peace activist who'd been nominated for the prize, Eygpt's Asmaa Mahfouz, told reporters:

'Giving it to Yemen means giving it to the Arab Spring. This is an honor to all of us and to all Arab states.'

The 3 are the 1st women to win the Nobel Peace Prize since 2004. That year the Committee honored Kenyan Wangari Muta Maathai, who died just days ago.

In passing: Wangari Maathai

(In passing marks the memory of a person featured in IntLawGrrls)

Dr. Wangari Maathai (left) succumbed Sunday to ovarian cancer at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
She'd been born on April 1, 1940, in Nyeri, a foothills district in the same country.
After earning a biology degree as a scholarship student at a small college in Kansas, followed by a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh, she went on to become the 1st woman in East or Central Africa to earn a Ph.D. -- in veterinary anatomy, from the University of Nairobi.
Maathai there served as a professor and department chair in the 1970s.
Toward the end of the same decade she founded the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977. Its mission:

to mobilize community consciousness -- using tree planting as an entry point -- for self-determination, equity, improved livelihoods and security, and environmental conservation.

For her efforts Maathai, about whom we've posted on numerous occasions, was awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. (photo credit) She is the only African woman to have been so honored.
In her Nobel Lecture, Maathai said:

Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.
In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.
That time is now.

As this passage indicates, her efforts extended well beyond the narrowest confines of environmentalism. In one of her later public statements, she endorsed the work of the International Criminal Court, an international organization subjected to considerable scrutiny in Maathai's native Kenya.
Tributes to Maathai from world leaders, including Barack Obama, Mary Robinson, and Nelson Mandela, may be found here.

On July 29

On this day in ...
... 1899, representatives of 26 states concluded a conference they'd begun more than 2 months earlier, on May 18, by adopting the Final Act of the 1st Hague Peace Conference. Russian Czar Nicholas II had convened the meeting, which came about after "[t]he various peace societies led by the indefatigable Baroness Bertha von Suttner, kept up a veritable drum roll of urgings and entreaties." The conference concluded with the adoption of several instruments, among them the 1899 Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land. (credit for photo of 2005 postage stamp honoring von Suttner, the 1905 Nobel Peace Prizewinner about whom we've posted)

(Prior July 29 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On July 15

On this day in ...
... 1955, 52 Nobel Prizewinners, many of them scientists, signed the Mainau Declaration, which called for an end to nuclear weaponry. (image credit) Signatory Linus Pauling, an Oregon-born, California-based scientist who'd been awarded the Prize in Chemistry in 1954, would win the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his antinuke efforts; at the presentation ceremony the declaration was quoted in full:

We, the undersigned, are scientists of different countries, different creeds, different political persuasions. Outwardly, we are bound together only by the Nobel Prize, which we have been favored to receive. With pleasure we have devoted our lives to the service of science. It is, we believe, a path to a happier life for people. We see with horror that this very science is giving mankind the means to destroy itself. By total military use of weapons feasible today, the earth can be contaminated with radioactivity to such an extent that whole peoples can be annihilated. Neutrals may die thus as well as belligerents.
If war broke out among the great powers, who could guarantee that it would not develop into a deadly conflict? A nation that engages in a total war thus signals its own destruction and imperils the whole world.
We do not deny that perhaps peace is being preserved precisely by the fear of these weapons. Nevertheless, we think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of these weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.
All nations must come to the decision to renounce force as a final resort. If they are not prepared to do this, they will cease to exist.

(Prior July 15 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Honor Elena Bonner 1923-2011

(Delighted to welcome back IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Felice Gaer, who contributes this tribute)

Elena Bonner was a remarkable woman and human rights defender, widely eulogized in the week since she died at 88 following heart surgery in Massachusetts. Bonner was, since 1972 the wife and after 1989, the widow of famed Soviet Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei D. Sakharov – the moral giant who stood for human rights, peace and telling the truth.
Elena was herself a major public figure, as well as a demanding mother and doting grandmother – and a wonderful interlocutor, and a great role model. Her loss is huge.
She had many years of activism as well as repeated bouts of illness and infirmity. But it was her ability to rise again and again from infirmity to activism, to speak up and demand change, to exhibit courage when others were wilting from the repression that was directed against the tiny dissident/human rights community, for which we will always remember her. And of course, for the many institutions she created and preserved, so the message and moral views of Andrei Sakharov will live on in Russia and beyond.
I first met Elena Bonner when she came to New York for heart surgery in 1986 – we even took this photo together, standing on Sakharov-Bonner Corner, just down the block from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. Before and in the years in between, I helped carry out the rapid-fire demands and requests that Mrs. Bonner conveyed when she was able to get through on a rare, closely controlled international phone line out of Russia. Her requests, frankly, were endless. Or so it seemed. When I learned that her eye trouble stemmed from being wounded at the front in World War Two, I thought – how ironic – she could have been a great General! She understood the need to combine strategy with action – to fight on several fronts, and never to give up.
In a New Yorker tribute, David Remnick recalls how Bonner was slandered by Soviet spokesmen as a “sexual brigand” and “predatory Jew” who somehow led Sakharov astray, but he reflects on how she served as Sakharov’s protector, his ‘lion at the gate’ – and that she was “unafraid” and resilient.
Former New York Times reporter Serge Schmemann simply describes her as “formidable,” “imposing”, “peremptory” and a “sergeant –major.”
Let’s be clear: Elena Bonner was not a minor player, not a “sergeant-major”-- she was courageous, demanding, and effective. And that is why she was one of the great human rights defenders of our time.
She was well aware of who she was and, of course, of the worldwide renown which her husband Sakharov had gained since his famous 1968 essay on human rights, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom."
I recall vividly visiting her in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1990 – about 6 months after Sakharov's untimely death, but well before the collapse of the Soviet Union had even been contemplated. It was the day of the Wellesley College graduation, just one town away, and the Soviet 1st Lady Raisa Gorbachev was the commencement speaker alongside U.S. 1st Lady Barbara Bush. There was a media frenzy around this – the first time that Mrs. Gorbachev, who was accompanying her husband, President Mikhail Gorbachev, on a state visit, was given such a platform in the United States.
When I arrived, Elena’s first question was, “What do you think of Raisa’s planned speech?”
I said I thought it was disgraceful, since the only reason Raisa Gorbachev was asked to be the commencement speaker at Wellesley was because she was the wife of a famous man.
Well, Elena responded immediately, “You could say the same thing about me..."
When I recovered my balance, I protested to the contrary – all the things she had done herself, the causes she championed, the organizations like the Moscow Helsinki Group and a fund for the children of political prisoner that she founded, among others. She was no mere reflection of a powerful man.
Still, Elena insisted that her ability to be heard – not to speak, but to be heard – depended in large measure on having been the wife of Andrei Sakharov, and that was now, well, a thing of the past. She remained the widow of Sakharov, but on her own, would anyone pay attention?
Bonner was devoted to Sakharov and his ideals, but he was just as devoted to her. (credit for photo of Sakharov and Bonner)
In the early 1980s, Sakharov was snatched on a Moscow street and exiled (we later learned he was in the Soviet city of Gorky), without charges or trial, and kept from communication with outsiders – both scientific colleagues and all others. Bonner became his sole link with the outside world, until she, too, was “detained”, tried, and sentenced to internal exile in Gorky. Sakharov warned that Bonner was at greater risk than himself:

‘This article is being taken to Moscow by my wife, my constant helper, who shares my exile and willingly takes upon herself the heavy burdens of traveling back and forth, handling my communications with the outside world, coping with the growing hatred of the KGB. Earlier she withstood the poison of slander and insinuation, focused more on her than on me. The fact that I am Russian and my wife is half-Jewish has proved useful for the purposes of the KGB.
‘Every time my wife leaves, I do not know whether she will be allowed to travel without hindrance and to return safely. My wife, although not formally under detention, is in greater danger than I am. I urge those who speak out on my behalf to keep this in mind. It is impossible to foresee what awaits us. Our only protection is the spotlight of public attention on our fate by friends around the world.’

After Sakharov’s death, Bonner spoke often, and was commonly controversial, challenging her hosts and looking to the future. She expressed concern about the direction of the modern human rights movement – concerned that too many had forgotten Sakharov and forgotten Russia.
She asked pointedly on her 2009 return to Oslo, where she had received Sakharov's Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 (left) (credit), about the reason for the silence of the world human rights community when it came to the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in 2006 by Hamas fighters and held incommunicado since then. Why doesn’t the treatment of this prisoner of war trouble you, she asked human rights defenders, in the same way as the fate of the GTMO prisoners? You fought over that and got results. She called for Shalit’s release, and remarked that the only reason she could find for the way the NGO community ignored him was that he is a Jew. Bonner used the occasion to remark that Norwegian views on Israel had evolved strangely. In so doing, she crisply spoke truth to power, now calling herself “a public figure and member of the movement for democratic change.”
Her views were not always negative, as her remarks to the Institute that I direct indicates:

‘In the early ’70s, the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) was one of the very few, if not the only one, among the Jewish organizations concerned with the general state of human rights in the Soviet Union, not limiting it to the issues of Jewish emigration, understanding that an injustice anywhere on the face of this earth is a threat to justice everywhere. This recognition drew common cause with the Soviet movement for democratic change in the 70s, lending it the authority and credibility much needed in what was then a climate of official malice, slander, and persecution. …
‘Among the people closely associated with JBI are those I am happy to call my friends. They have shared the same beliefs with me and Andrei Sakharov, they have stood up for us when we were in danger, they helped us in our efforts to make human rights ideals a reality. ...
‘It is hard to imagine or to remember today that these words 'human rights' were not always the accepted, respectable, almost commonplace words we take them for now. Yet it is true that they were the dangerous, impertinent and disturbing words many a state head could not bear hearing! It is thanks to individuals … and institutions like the JBI, who had the courage to be impertinent, that today it is more and more difficult for the rights-violating governments to challenge the universality of human rights and to ignore human rights concerns. This indeed is a sign of how much can be done by commitment and humanity to safeguard human life and dignity.'

Let us all remember to honor Elena Bonner’s memory by being impertinent, by working to defend human rights as she did – relentlessly.

In passing: Elena Bonner

'Until the party truly gives up all its wealth to the people who really earned it, everything, down to the last... rouble, Stalinism will still triumph and it will still triumph until we can establish the principle of sovereignty. Sovereignty of the individual, sovereignty of the family and home, sovereignty of every ethnic group and every state.'

So said Elena Bonner (above right), speaking about the Communist Party in 1991, the year of formal dissolution of the Soviet Union and its bloc of satellite republics, and 2 years after the death of her husband, Nobel Peace Prizewinner Andrei Sakharov.
A longtime human rights activist in her own right, Bonner died in Boston Saturday, 88 years after her birth in what is now Turkmenistan. She had continued her activism till the end, just last year lending her name to an online petition against Vladimir Putin, Russia's Prime Minister.

On June 9

On this day in ...
... 1843, Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner (left) was born Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A prolific author and a long-time peace activist, in 1905 she would win the 5th-ever Nobel Peace Prize, and so become the 1st woman ever to be so honored. According to her Nobel biography, her book Das Maschinenzeitalter (The Machine Age) (1889) "was among the first to foretell the results of exaggerated nationalism and armaments." She carried this theme through to a popular novel published the same year, Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down Your Arms). That title later was used for a peace journal, one of von Suttner's many activities on behalf of peace. She died from an illness believed to have been cancer on June 21, 1914. Her Nobel biography concludes by observing that this date was just

two months before the erupting of the world war she had warned and struggled against. ... The war and its immediate aftermath put an end not only to the plans of the peace movement for the congress in Vienna but to its plans for a monument to Bertha von Suttner.

(Prior June 9 posts are here, here, here, and here.)