On August 17

On this day in ...
... 1946, Dorcas Coker-Appiah (left) was born in Wenchi, Ghana. In 1972 she received her law degree, with honors, from the University of Ghana, and was called to the bar the same year. She's been a women's rights activist throughout her career, with a particular emphasis on legal literacy and leadership training. Coker-Appiah serves as Executive Director of the Gender Studies and Human Right Documentation Centre, based in Accra, and as a board member of WIPSEN-Africa, the Women Peace and SecurityNetwork Africa. Her publications include a co-authored chapter on "Societal influences on the conduct of conjugal relations," in a 2003 collection edited by Akua Kuenyehia, Women and Law in West Africa: Gender Relations in the Family -- A West African Perspective(reviewed here). Since 2003, Coker-Appiah has served as a member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, succeeding Kuenyehia, who resigned upon her election as a Judge of the International Criminal Court.

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

And Dame Higgins (still) stands alone

Overlooked in news about this month's election of judges: It appears that as of February 6, 2009, the International Court of Justice will revert to a men-only bench.

The only woman ever to have served on the 42-year-old World Court is its current President, Rosalyn Higgins (left) of the United Kingdom, named a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1995. Her term's up in February, and her compatriot, our colleague Christopher Greenwood, was among the 4 just chosen to fill upcoming vacancies. All 4 -- like all others who have served on the Court -- are men.

Women have served in sizable numbers on most of the international tribunals of the last couple decades. To name a very few:

► Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, onetime President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia who's now on the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal;

► Navanethem Pillay, formerly President of the the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and now U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights;

► Akua Kuenyehia, currently 1st Vice President at the International Criminal Court; and

► Patricia Wald, formerly an ICTY judge and Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and now co-chair of a high-level ICC Task Force just launched by the American Society of International Law (see p. 1 of link).

In short, the absence of women international judges -- decried in Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin, & Shelley Wright, Feminist Approaches to International Law, 85 American Journal of International Law 613 (1991) -- is, increasingly, an aberration unique to the ICJ.

On this day

On March 11, ...
... 2003 (5 years ago today), at The Hague, Netherlands, 7 women and 11 men, representing 18 countries, were sworn in as the 1st judges of the International Criminal Court, a newly established permanent tribunal charged with adjudicating the world's most heinous crimes. (photo credit) A 2d round of elections was held in 2006. Women serving as ICC judges today are: Akua Kuenyehia of Ghana, 1st Vice-President; Elizabeth Odio Benito of Costa Rica; Navanethem Pillay of South Africa; Fatoumata Dembele Diarra of Mali; Anita Ušacka of Latvia; Sylvia Steiner of Brazil; and Ekaterina Trendafilova of Bulgaria. As posted above, the from-the-inception inclusion of women sets the ICC apart from other tribunals, among them the WTO Appellate Body.
... 1708 (300 years ago today), a bill intended to reorganize the Scottish Militia failed as Queen Anne withheld Royal Assent. The act marked the last time that British monarch has vetoed a law passed by Parliament.