On November 3

On this day in ...

... 1958 (50 years ago today), the UNESCO Palace, headquarters of the U.N. Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization, opened in Paris. Among those commemorating the inauguration was Tunisia, which issued the postage stamp at left.

... 1793 (215 years ago today), during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, Olympe de Gouges (right) perished beneath the guillotine. IntLawGrrls has posted before on this revolutionary, abolitionist, feminist writer, who is the transnational foremother of our own Hélène Ruiz Fabri.

Write On! "IntLaw in a Heterogeneous World"

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.) If you're at work on a paper within the broad theme of "International Law in a Heterogeneous World/Le Droit international dans un monde hétérogène," consider submitting it for presentation at a conference of the same name to be held September 4-6, 2008, in Heidelberg, Germany. Organizers are the European Society of International Law -- this'll be the 3d biennial conference of ESIL, the still-young society for which IntLawGrrl Hélène Ruiz Fabri serves as President -- and the Heidelberg-based Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.
2 types of papers're being sought for 2 types of panels, each of which'll comprise a chair and 4 presenters:
1st, for the 8 "Fora," papers that "directly address different aspects of the main topic of the conference," as follows: "International Law and Religions"; "Immigration/Migration: How states cope with increasing pluralism within their societies – the role of international law"; "The Multiplicity of Law-Making Processes/ International Law-Making facing Heterogeneity"; "International Law and the Media/Interaction between international law and the media in a heterogeneous world"; "Heterogeneity reflected in International Legal Traditions"; "The Role of the WTO in balancing Heterogeneity of Interests in the shaping of International Law"; and "International Law and the Millennium Development goals."
2d, for the 8 "Agorae," papers "that do not directly address the topic of the conference but should stimulatethe exchange of views on specific thematic areas of international law," as follows: "History"; "International Organizations, Institutions and Administration"; "Legitimacy of International Law"; "Social Justice"; "Sexuality and Gender"; "International Crime"; "Science"; and "Environmental Law."
Abstracts are due no later than January 21, 2008. Details here.

Go On! ESIL conference in Budapest

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest.) "The Power of International Law in Times of European Integration" is the theme for the Biennial Research Forum of the European Society of International Law, to be held September 28 and 29 in Budapest, Hungary. Opening the conference will be Sorbonne Law Professor Hélène Ruiz Fabri (left), ESIL President and IntLawGrrls' own Olympe de Gouges. Panel chairs include Professor Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva; Judge Ineta Ziemele, European Court of Human Rights; Professor Anne Peters, University of Basel; and Professor Iulia Motoc, University of Bucharest.
Presenters include: Zsuzsa Csergo, "Negotiating Boundaries: Language of Inclusion and Exclusion"; Ieva Kalnina, "Assessment of Citizenship Policy in the European Context"; Daphné Richmond, "The New New Peacekeepers? Private Military Companies and the Future of Peacekeeping Operations"; Ann Pauwels, "NATO as a Peacekeeper"; Dessislava Cheytanova, "Separatism or Legitimate Aspirations to Independence"; Agnes Hurwitz, "Where Have the Refugees Gone?"; Mercedes Guinea Llorente, "Tales of 'Civilisation': Transfer of Values through the Eastern Neighbourhood Policy"; Barbara Delcourt, "Peut-on réellement considérer que l'action de l'UE au Kosovo participe d'une stratégie de construction d'un Etat et quelle est la place réservée au droit international dans la mise en place de ce projet?"; Milica Matijević, "Multiculturalism as a Foundation for a New Legal System: The Case of Kosovo"; and Fernanda Fernandez Jankov and Vesna Čorič, "The legality of uti posseditis in the Kosovo's dissolution."
Full program here; registration here.

Déclaration des droits de la femme

To mark the 218th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille that led to the demise of the French monarchy, we quote from Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen penned in 1791 by a Revolutionary woman, namesake of IntLawGrrl Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Olympes de Gouges (below right):

Preamble. ... Considering that ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of women are the sole causes of public miseries, and of corruption of governments, they have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, the natural, unalterable and sacred rights of woman ....
Article 1. Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. ...
Article 2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man and woman. These rights are liberty, prosperity, security and above all, resistance to oppression.
Article 4. Liberty and justice consist in giving back to others all that belongs to them; thus the only limits on the exercise of woman's natural rights are the perpetual tyranny by which man opposes her; these limits must be reformed by the laws of nature and of reason.
Article 7. No woman can be an exception: she will be accused, apprehended and detained in cases determined by law; women, like men, will obey the rigorous rule.
Article 10. No one ought to be disturbed for one's opinions, however fundamental they are; since a woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to address the House, providing her interventions do not disturb the public order as it has been established by law.
Article 13. For the upkeep of public forces and for administrative expenses, the contribution of woman and man are equal; a woman shares in all the labours required by law, in the painful tasks; she must therefore have an equal share in the distribution of offices, employments, trusts, dignities and work.
Afterword. Women, wake up! The alarm bell of reason is making itself heard throughout the universe; recognize your rights. ... The enslaved man multiplied his forces but has had to resort to yours to break his chains. Once free he became unjust to his female companion. O women! women, when will you stop being blind? What advantages have you received from the revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked contempt? During the centuries of corruption, your only power was over the weaknesses of men. Your empire is destroyed, what then is left to you?

Gouges' exhortations were dismissed out of hand, according to Lucy Moore's Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France. Indeed, Gouges died on the guillotine in 1793. Of the women profiled, Judith Warner wrote in review of Moore's "marvelous new book," only 1 "escaped the revolution more or less unscathed." "The revolution," Warner writes, "brought women many tributes to their maternal graces, their high-minded morals, their 'natural' homebound virtues. Yet veneration of Woman and hatred of real women were one and the same." Her review concludes with a quote about men that, though from Lucile Duplessis (left), another Revolutionary woman, could well have come from Gouges' pen: "'That they would worship us less and set us free!'"