Remembering Beijing: The Ferraro Factor

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

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.
Gerry was then appointed to head the US delegation to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva as Ambassador. After she took the reins of the delegation for its 1994 session, the UN created the post of Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, with a mandate to investigate and intervene to stop abuses worldwide. Additionally, at Gerry’s direction, attention to women’s rights and a gender perspective was incorporated into UN resolutions authorizing many other investigations into human rights abuses.
The following year, after setbacks at a spring Preparatory Conference (“Prepcon”), women advocates realized it was urgent to have strong US leadership on women’s human rights issues as a part of the negotiating team for the upcoming Beijing World Conference on Women, scheduled for September 1995. The World Conference was under attack from various quarters – representatives of the Vatican and Islamic countries had worked vigorously at the Prepcon to place large portions of the draft Platform for Action into brackets (meaning they would remain open to negotiation) and had added proposals challenging the universality of human rights. Some opponents of the Conference offered the concept of ‘human dignity’ as an alternative to that of equal rights (i.e., women might have dignity but may not have equal rights). Others demanded recognition of parental rights and duties rather than the human rights of women and girls, and questioned the use of the word gender. The topic of reproductive rights was challenged directly in ways seeking to undermine advancements stemming from the October 1994 Cairo World Conference on Population and Development.
Gerry was appointed a vice-chair of the US delegation to Beijing in June 1995 and reached out immediately to NGOs and experts alike to work with her and tackle the issues one by one. She engaged in a wide range of informal contacts to try to improve the diplomatic atmosphere—and to reach agreements that affirmed rather than destroyed women’s universal rights. Ensuring a successful outcome in Beijing required her to engage with critics at home, as well as to interact with the representatives of the Vatican and Islamic states from Iran to Sudan. Conference language affirming universality of women’s human rights was threatened by other proposed language that would have both endorsed cultural relativity and emphasized national sovereignty, in particular, through repetition of a key footnote that had ‘saved’ the Cairo conference by encouraging each country to interpret the rights any way it wished. In the end, Gerry Ferraro succeeded in maintaining a US position that preserved the emphasis on universality of women’s rights for all, and concentrated on ensuring equal rights for women.
Hillary Clinton’s remarkable speech at the Conference fixed in delegates’ minds the concept that “women’s rights are human rights” and that they are not something different, inferior, or diminished as compared to other human rights.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action went on to affirm that violence against women was not merely an ‘obstacle’ to equality and peace as had been stated earlier in the 1980 Copenhagen World Conference on Women, but also an abuse that impaired and violated the enjoyment of human rights by women. It defined violence against women broadly – as a phenomenon occurring in public and in private – that had to be prevented, outlawed and punished. The document calls for reporting and monitoring of violations, investigations and prosecutions of perpetrators, due diligence by governments and accountability. The document identifies rape in armed conflict – the issue that spurred Ferraro to engage with the UN’s human rights bodies – as a war crime and under certain circumstances as a crime against humanity or act of genocide. The Beijing World Conference advanced women’s rights both conceptually and politically.
Gerry Ferraro, who was born on Women’s Equality Day (August 26), could claim a victory for the ideas, strategies, and ongoing efforts to bring women’s human rights issues into the mainstream of UN human rights bodies and world attention. Here, as in her unprecedented political candidacy, her efforts and achievements strengthened the position of all women.

(credit for September 12, 1995, UN/DPI 120801 photo by Chen Kai Xing of Ferraro, center, in Beijing)

Environmental racism case against U.S. declared admissible by Inter-American Commission

An environmental human rights case brought against the United States has been declared admissible by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Toxic contaminants spewed by fourteen industrial facilities in and around Mossville, Louisiana, have been polluting the air, water and land there for years. The residents of this poor, mostly African-American community suffer health problems that are known to be caused by the types of chemicals those facilities produce, including cancer and damage to cardiovascular, nervous, respiratory and immune systems. And they suffer from them at higher than average levels. Just one example: Dioxin levels in their blood are three times higher than the national average. No wonder CNN entitled a recent program: Toxic towns: People of Mossville are 'like an experiment.'
After trying to achieve change through state and federal authorities and through the companies themselves, the residents of Mossville turned to international human rights bodies. In 1999, a member of the Mossville community spoke at the UN Commission on Human Rights about what it was like to live in such environmental degradation. Read his powerful statement here.
Environmental racism in the United States had already caught the attention of the UN. When the UN Special Rapporteur on racism and racial discrimination visited the United States in 1994, he received information from several organizations about this problem. In the report of his visit he included a section entitled "Racism and the Environment" in which he took note of studies showing that the racial composition of a population "was decisive in the choice of sites" for toxic product depots, toxic waste dumps and hazardous waste facilities. At the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1999, the Mossville spokesperson urged the UN to send the Special Rapporteur on the dumping of toxic waste to visit Mossville and investigate the dumping and storage of toxic waste there.
But little changed, and the government kept issuing permits to the polluters.
Then, in 2005, the residents of Mossville turned to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in a petition brought against the United States on their behalf by lawyers Monique Harden (right) and Nathalie Walker (left) of the New Orleans-based NGO, Environmental Advocates for Human Rights. A second amended petition was filed in 2008 that included petitioners' observations on the government response to their claims.
On March 30, 2010, the Inter-American Commission communicated to Environmental Advocates that the petition had been declared admissible. The admissibility decision is available here. The decision to accept the case is significant in several respects.

• First, the Inter-American Commission rejected the government's argument that what the residents of Mossville are being subjected to regarding environmental pollution are not violations of rights protected in the of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (sic). The Commission found potential claims regarding the right to equality and freedom from racial discrimination (Article II) and the right to protection of the law for one's private and family life (Article V). As to the latter, the Commission noted European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence that a State's failure to prevent a plant from polluting nearby homes violated the right to privacy. As for the other rights the petitioners argued have been violated, including the rights to life, and to the preservation of one's health, the Commission decided that domestic remedies had not been exhausted.
  
• Second, the Commission rejected the US argument that racially discriminatory impact does not amount a human rights violation "absent a clear showing of intentional discrimination." Racial discrimination does not have to be intentional to trigger state responsibility. Under international human rights law, policies and practices that have the effect of depriving people of their rights because of their race are human rights violations. This approach recognizes that just because the racially discriminatory treatment one is experiencing is unintentional, that does not diminish the existence or experience of that racially discriminatory treatment.
  
• Third, the decision goes to the heart of the importance of having an effective remedy when one's rights have been violated. The state has an obligation to take steps to ensure that its permit-issuing decisions do not result in a racially disproportionate burden with respect to the pollution that results, and an obligation to provide an effective remedy for racial discrimination that does result.

Read the Advocates for Environmental Human Rights press release about the IACHR admissibility decision here.
As for the industries operating in and around Mossville, in 2007 the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre asked companies if they wished to respond to reports of environmental health problems in Mossville; the reports and the companies' responses are shared here.

On April 29

On this day in ...
... 2002, a year after it lost a seat for the 1st time in history, the United States regained a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission by winning 1 of 4 seats set aside for western countries. Established in 1947, the 53-member Commission would expire in 2006 and be replaced by the Human Rights Council, a 47-member body to which, as we've posted, the United States this year plans to seek election for the 1st time.
... 1946, in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East formally charged Hideki Tojo, who'd served as Japan's Prime Minister during World War II, as well as 27 other Japanese military leaders. Defendants were charged with 55 counts of international crimes in the indictment. (credit for photo at right of Tojo)

(Prior April 29 posts are here and here.)

U.N. rapporteurs no longer so special?

The Human Rights Council this week stoked the controversy that's surrounded it since its founding in 2006.
The Council supplanted the Human Rights Commission -- a six-decades-old body that critics contended had become too political and, more to the point, too beholden to the politics of countries not themselves known for compliance with international human rights norms. Yet on many fronts human rights reform has not accompanied this re-forming of the U.N.'s human rights apparatus.
Not only has the Council concentrated on Israel to the exclusion of other countries, but it, like its predecessor, has included many human rights transgressors. Indeed, transgressors' sway may have increased, given the decision of the United States not to seek a seat on the Council. (Some surmise the the United States refused to run after counting noses and realizing that, on account of its own post-9/11 behavior, it might not win were it in fact to campaign for a seat.)
Add now yesterday's news of what Le Monde calls "a new breach in the system of 'special rapporteurs' inherited from the former Commission." On Thursday, Le Monde wrote,

under the pressure of the African group, and with the support of the Islamic Conference, China, and Russia, the Council proclaimed -- 'by consensus' -- the nonrenewal of the mandate of the 'special rapporteur' on the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly, Zaïre), a country where human rights violates continue to be massive.

Congo thus joined Cuba and Belarus as countries who've been freed of Special Rapporteur investigations in 2 years, and adds fuel to concerns that most such mandates soon will disappear. Julie Gromellon of the Fédération internationale des droits de l'homme (FIDH) decried the notion that notion that a "thematic rapporteur" would do the job of the country-based expert, while Juliette de Rivero of Human Rights Watch issued this warning:

The Human Rights Council put politics before people by deciding not to renew the expert mandate on the Congo. Downgrading the council's work in Congo despite the recent rapes and killings is inexplicable and could have tragic consequences.

Building Democracy Within the UN

The United Nations Human Rights Council, created in 2006 to replace the controversial Human Rights Commission, has taken a small but interesting step towards remedying the "democratic deficit" in international organizations. Under the Council's Resolution 5/1, non-governmental organizations and other civil society stakeholders (including individuals) may nominate candidates for Special Rapporteur, Independent Expert, and Working Group positions (collectively labelled Special Procedures - Mandate Holders). With fourteen vacancies coming up in March 2008, ranging from the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography, now is the time to send in your nominations! In all seriousness, if we define democracy as participation, this is not an enormous step, especially given that once a "public list" of candidates is compiled, a "consultative group" will then propose a short list of candidates with the highest qualifications -- giving due consideration to the exclusion of nominated candidates from the public list, mind you -- to the President. The President, in turn, will look to these recommendations as well as "broad consultations" before creating a final list of proposed candidates to be considered and appointed by the Council. Phew. A lot of bureaucracy -- but how much democracy? I suppose it depends how wedded we are to the participatory definition of democracy. Can the goals of participation -- representation and engagement or buy-in -- be met through other means than a popular vote? And are there other definitions of democracy that might encompass this careful consultation process with stakeholders and experts? As a proceduralist, my concern is with the lack of formal mechanisms to ensure that various voices are heard, which stakes the success of the process on the good faith of the actors therein; always, in my mind, a risk. But in the end, I think even this small step towards including non-state actors in the process should be celebrated as an advance for democracy-building in international organizations.

On July 12, ...

... 1984, U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro was chosen as the Democratic nominee for Vice President, making her the 1st woman to run at the top of a major party's slate. In November the New York native and her running mate, U.S. Sen. Walter F. Mondale, received only 40.56% of the popular vote, and lost every state except his home of Minnesota. By a margin of 57%-42%, women voters preferred the GOP ticket of Ronald Reagan-George H.W. Bush, reported Maureen Dowd at the time, adding: "All nine female challengers for the Senate lost their bids. And of 41 female challengers for the House, only two won, with the chance for a third in a Utah race still too close to call.'" In 1993 Ferraro led the United States' delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
... 1954, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party-Minn.) was born in South St. Paul, Minn.