Guest Blogger: Olivia Swaak-Goldman

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Olivia Swaak-Goldman (left) as today's guest blogger.
Olivia is the International Cooperation Advisor in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. In that position, she's responsible for the Office's external relations. (photo credit)
Prior to joining the ICC, Olivia was Senior Legal Counsel at the International Law Department of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she was responsible for international criminal law and international humanitarian law. She has also served as a Legal Assistant at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal and at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She was a Research Fellow at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She earned a degree in political science from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, her law degree from Washington College of Law, American University, Washington, D.C., and her LL.M degree from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Along with former ICTY Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Olivia co-edited the 2-volume Substantive and Procedural Aspects of International Criminal Law (2000). She's published extensively, in journals and books, on areas of international criminal law.
A member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, Olivia took part, during ASIL's recent midyear meeting, in a panel on international criminal accountability. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts)
In her guest post below, Olivia sets forth the Prosecutor's perspectives on the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, set to begin before Trial Chamber III (comprising Judges Sylvia Steiner (Brazil)), Joyce Aluoch (Kenya), and Kuniko Ozaki (Japan)) at 2:30 p.m. Hague time tomorrow. You can watch video streaming of proceedings here, and follow trial updates here.

Heartfelt welcome!

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 September 15, ...

... 1978, British antiterrorist police arrested a woman working as a mechanics instructor in a London garage, charging that she was "one of the most wanted members" of Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang. Astrid Proll (left) was suspected of involvement in murders and of membership in that group and its "successor, the Red Army Faction." Initially fighting extradition to Germany on murder charges, eventually Proll returned and stood trial on charges of bank robbery and falsifying documents. In February 1980 she was sentenced to 5-1/2 years yet released immediately, having received credit for time already served.
... 1939, Elizabeth Odio Benito (right) was born in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. She grew up in the country's capital, San José. Encouraged by an uncle to follow the family tradition of lawyering, in 1964 she received a master's degree from the University of Costa Rica, eventually becoming a professor, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and interim President there. Her extensive work for human rights included membership on U.N. Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and service as Special Rapporteur to the U.N. Sub-Commission on Discrimination and Intolerance based on Religion or Creed. Of her tenure as Vice President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia from 1993-1995, she told Women's Human Rights net that she, along with then-President Gabrielle Kirk McDonald and the Office of the Prosecutor,

undertook the task of making visible the sexual and gender violence that women suffer both in 'peacetime' and in international and internal armed conflicts -- a task left undone since World War II. We also made visible that rape and other sexual abuses were used as weapons of war, as means of terror ....

Odio Benito is now a Judge on the International Criminal Court.

On July 14, ...

... 1976, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reports, "After a decade of fierce debate and an impassioned, last-ditch speech by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the House of Commons narrowly passes Bill C-84, abolishing the death penalty in Canada." The vote was 132 to 124. Amnesty International's account of the history of capital punishment in Canada, before and after this vote, is here.
... 1996, Presiding Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (right) delivered the sentence that she and 2 other judges of Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia levied against Duško Tadić: 20 years' imprisonment following conviction, after the 1st international criminal trial since the post-World War II era, on multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the attack against Prijedor, Bosnia. The term of sentence would become final, following further appellate- and trial-level litigation, in 2000.