JBI Human Rights

JBI Remembers Beijing: The Ferraro Factor

Geraldine A. Ferraro, who passed away this weekend, is a symbol of women’s rights advocacy.

As America’s first female candidate of a major party for vice-president, she broke barriers. But readers of IntLawGrrls may not know how actively and directly she influenced women’s rights issues in the international legal context as well.

Appalled by televised reports about the use of rape as a weapon of war by Serbs in the Bosnian conflict, Gerry contacted Madeleine Albright to ask what the new Clinton Administration was doing about it. She was immediately asked to join the Administration’s first delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, in February 1993, where she helped convince Member States to adopt a separate resolution addressing rape in war.

As Gerry told it, accomplishing this task required her to conduct gender-sensitivity training, too. For example, she found herself telling the male diplomats from the Islamic Conference that they needed to recognize that such sexual violence was not so much an insult to THEIR "honor" (which was all they were prepared to declare) but rather a very real lasting physical and psychological abuse of the women who were victimized. Gerry emphasized that something serious had to be done by the Commission to name it, stop it, punish the perpetrators and aid the survivors. As a result, the Commission adopted a resolution that called for "joint and separate action to end this despicable practice," as well as for investigations, accountability and assistance to the victims.

Later that year, the protection of women’s rights was affirmed as a major focus of the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna – only a few hundred miles from Bosnia itself.

JBI Calls for US Ratification of Women's Rights Treaty

On November 18, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law will hold a hearing on the importance of US ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).  It will be the first time in eight years that the Senate has held such a hearing on the women's rights treaty, which the US signed in 1980 but has never ratified, and on which the Senate has never held a full floor vote.

Today, JBI Director Felice Gaer submitted a statement in support of US ratification of the CEDAW for inclusion in the congressional record.  Drawing upon JBI's long history of support for US ratification of the CEDAW and on her perspective as the first American member of the Committee against Torture, the monitoring committee for a parallel UN treaty, Gaer urged all US senators to vote in favor of US ratification of the CEDAW, stating, "The United States has long accepted the principle that women's rights are human rights; it is time for the Senate to act on that principle and to approve US ratification of the international treaty that does the most to make this principle a reality." 

The letter argued that the CEDAW has been uniquely important to women worldwide struggling for non-discrimination and to exercise basic human rights, particularly because those States that ratify the CEDAW are required to report regularly to a monitoring committee composed of independent experts from 24 countries.  Those experts then examine the reports submitted by State parties and offer comments and suggestions concerning compliance in an inter-active dialogue. 

Gaer stated that the CEDAW Committee, like the Committee against Torture, on which she has served since 2000, offers the US an opportunity to engage directly with rogue regimes and violator countries on the advancement of women's rights.  CEDAW ratification would allow the United States not only to vote for the members of the CEDAW Committee but  to itself seek election to the Committee.  The letter noted that many of the members of the CEDAW Committee have called for US ratification of CEDAW, arguing that if it were to become a member of the Committee, it would strengthen the Committee's scrutiny of violator countries.

The letter noted that CEDAW ratification is consistent with the "principled engagement" strategy that the US government presently pursues in its relations with other UN bodies.  Conversely, the US's current status as one of only seven countries worldwide that have failed to ratify the CEDAW--a distinction it shares with Iran, Sudan, and Somalia--is an embarrassment, given the leadership that the US has shown in advancing women's rights and equality at home and abroad.  It also stated that US ratification of the CEDAW would result in few costs to the Unites States, because as a result of its longtime commitment to women's rights and equality, the US is already substantially in compliance with the treaty. 

The full statement is available here: Download JBI CEDAW statement

More information about the Senate's Nov. 18 hearing on CEDAW ratification and a link to the webcast is available here: Senate CEDAW hearing.

JBI on Women’s Rights and Torture

JBI, which has long worked on women's rights and ensuring that rape in armed conflict is prosecuted as torture, helped develop this appeal to the International Criminal Court and was co-signatory, along with several UN special rapporteurs and treaty experts, for The Case of the Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo.

JBI on the Evolution of Women’s Rights within the UN

Women, International Law and International Institutions: The Case of the United Nations.  This article by JBI Director Felice Gaer considers the evolution of women's rights concepts and mechanisms within the United Nations. Gaer writes about this subject both as an historian of and a longstanding activist for women's human rights. She provides a critical history of how “women's” rights have been separated from and connected to “human” rights within the UN.

Gaer examines how the Commission on the Status of Women, the original UN division which inherited the agenda of the first wave of international feminism, dealt with many of the challenges raised by the activists and organization that proceeded it: making the shift away from great power, Euro American leadership; facing new political environments raised by anti-colonial and third world national developments; and expanding the feminist agenda beyond political and civil rights. By ending with an examination of the dilemma of enforcement that the UN still faces with respect to women's human rights, Gaer makes it clear that the subject of international feminism presents challenges that go beyond the academic, and is continuously linked with the efforts and freedom of the world's women.