MAC/Rodarte Juárez debacle: How fashion & makeup bloggers raised corporate & public human rights awareness

(IntLawGrrls is delighted to welcome back alumna M.C. Sungaila, who contributes this guest post)

Less than a month after they took part in a U.N. summit, two U.S. companies tested the limits of social responsibility and were brought to task by fashion and makeup bloggers -- not the United Nations.
About 7,000 businesses from more than 135 countries took part in a June U.N. Global Compact Leaders Summit in New York City. The Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate citizenship initiative. The Compact’s Women’s Empowerment Principles, launched this past International Women’s Day, offer guidance to companies on how to empower women in the workplace, marketplace, and community in accordance with international human rights principles.
Global Compact signatories include major global corporations across a range of industries: Deloitte, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Bank of America, Cisco, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Pepsico, Microsoft, Monsanto, and Royal Dutch Shell, for example.
The Global Compact’s Ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment, and anti-corruption are derived from U.N. human rights documents. The first principle of the Global Compact is respecting and supporting human rights. The first principle notes that corporate responsibility to respect human rights exists independently of a state’s responsibility to do so and advises that a corporation’s “good works” in one area cannot excuse its infringement of human rights in another. The Compact’s Women’s Empowerment Principles name as priorities promoting equality through community initiatives and advocacy and establishing high-level corporate leadership around gender equality.
But it was the fashion and makeup blogosphere that took two companies, MAC Cosmetics and Rodarte, to task.
► MAC Cosmetics has historically shown profound awareness around social issues. The MAC AIDS Fund, established in 1994, has raised $139 million through the sale of its VIVA GLAM lipstick and lipgloss, from which 100% of sales are donated to fight HIV/AIDS.
► Fashion house Rodarte, founded by California-born sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, is a relative newcomer to the fashion scene, prized for its artsy approach.
For Fall 2010, MAC and Rodarte teamed up for a fashion collection and integrated makeup line. According to the Mulleavy sisters, the collection was inspired by their travels across Texas' landscape en route to the art town of Marfa, and the imagined “lines of women workers making their way to factory jobs in the middle of the night” across the border in Juarez, Mexico. (above left; photo credit)
The nail polish, lipstick, and other makeup bore names such as “Juarez,” “Bordertown,” “Factory,” “Ghost Town,” “Sleepwalker,” and “Quinceanera.”
The presentation of the Rodarte clothing collection at the Fall fashion shows – during which the models wore the accompanying MAC makeup line – featured a parade of pale-faced models wearing tattered white lace dresses, looking like ghostly brides. Style.com, commenting on the show, noted that the models could be seen as “the ghosts of the victims of Juarez’s drug wars.” (below right; photo credit)
(I have posted on killings and disappearances of women in Juárez; other IntLawGrrls' posts on the tragedy are here and here.)
MAC and Rodarte sent out press releases for the Fall collection to the fashion and makeup media, including bloggers, in mid-summer. The reaction from beauty bloggers was immediately negative and visceral. MAC and Rodarte appeared to be exploiting, romanticizing – or, perhaps even worse, to be ignorant of – the decades of unsolved killings of hundreds of women and girls in Juarez, many of whom had migrated to the city to work in the factories for minimal wages.
The beauty bloggers decried the collection and called for MAC and Rodarte to take action. As Politics Daily reported:

[B]eauty bloggers who were given advance press kits and samples for the fashion line lashed out at MAC/Rodarte for romanticizing the lives of women fraught with violence and poverty.
Jessica Wakeman of The Frisky called the collection "tasteless" and asked, "What's next, a lipstick called Bergen-Belsen?"

After more than a hundred blogs were found to have objected and called for boycotts, MAC/Rodarte apologizeed and promised to give $100,000 to an appropriate nonprofit. Politics Daily continued:
Newly politicized, beauty and fashion writers began calling for the two companies to donate the entirety of their profits from the collection to women and girls in Juarez.
Within weeks, Rodarte agreed

to turn over its global profits from the sale of the MAC/Rodarte collection to a new initiative that will provide grants to local and international organizations that raise awareness and provide resources for women and girls in Juarez.

But that is not the end of the story. The bloggers’ efforts to raise the companies’ social awareness around the plight of women and girls in Juárez ended in the companies pulling the makeup collection. The companies still pledged to donate all of the projected global profits from the sale of the collection to benefit women and girls in Juárez.
The lessons from this debacle?
► For MAC and Rodarte: that some “due diligence” about the social realities surrounding the inspiration for their collections should be done prior to releasing them, and that social responsibility in one arena does not excuse lack of social awareness in another.
► For individual citizens: that we each have the power to effect change. For those involved in human rights work: that sometimes change and awareness about abuses can come from unexpected, everyday sources.

Guest Blogger: M.C. Sungaila

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome M.C. Sungaila (right) as today's guest blogger.

M.C. joined the firm of Horvitz & Levy, Encino, California, in 1997, and became a partner in 2003. She earned her B.A. with multiple honors from Stanford University and her J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, then clerked for Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
An appellate specialist, M.C. has consistently helped secure important rights for women and girls internationally, nationally, and throughout California. She's served as pro bono counsel of record for amici in, or consulted on, more than 17 women’s and civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, and the California Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal. Recognitions of M.C.'s work include listings in the Best Lawyers of America (2010) and the Top 50 Southern California Female Super Lawyers (2008-2010), as well as profiles in the Los Angeles Times and National Law Journal.

Along with David S. Ettinger, a colleague at Horvitz & Levy, M.C. filed a brief in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on behalf of Amnesty International and more than 50 other groups and legal experts in Campo Algodonero, involving violence against women in Ciudad Juárez. She analyzes the Inter-American Court's decision in her guest post below.

M.C. dedicates her IntLawGrrls contribution to the women of Ciudad Juárez who fought for dignity, respect, and justice for decades and at great personal cost. She calls special attention to 2008 Mexican National Human Rights Award winner Esther Chávez (left), who was one of the first to discover the widespread murder of young female factory workers, advocate for their murders and disappearances to be investigated, and founded Casa Amiga (the region’s first rape crisis and domestic violence center). (photo credit) Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1933, Chávez died in Ciudad Juárez on Christmas Day 2009, weeks after the Campo Algodonero decision became public.

Juárez: Women’s rights as human rights

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, has been named one of the most dangerous cities in the world. More than 4,000 people have been killed in the city since January 2008, following a declaration of war between two drug cartels. Three persons with ties to the U.S. consulate were killed on the same day just last week. Federal troops have been called in to attempt to quell the latest round of violence.

But before the official drug war, there was a war on women, which Mexican authorities all but ignored.
According to the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women of the Inter-American Commission, from 1993 to 2003 an estimated 268 women and girls were murdered, with only 20 percent of these crimes ending in trials and convictions, while the disappearances of an additional 250 women and girls also remained unsolved. (image credit) The number of women killed in Ciudad Juárez throughout the 1990s increased at twice the rate for men; the homicide rate for women in Juárez is reportedly more than three times as great as that in Tijuana, a border city of comparable size. The disappearances and murders have continued unchecked.

And the women’s deaths are brutal.

Many young women are found days or months after their disappearances, their bodies abandoned in vacant lots and bearing signs of torture, sexual assault, and, in some cases, mutilation. Mexican authorities’ investigations of these crimes have been said to be negligent and ineffective. And now, a human rights court has declared Mexico’s inaction to be a violation of Mexico’s international obligations to protect women and girls.

Last December 10, on World Human Rights Day, the November 16 decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights was made public. It held Mexico responsible for failing to respond to the disappearances of three of these young women. The seven-member Court, composed of “jurists of the highest moral authority and of recognized competence in the field of human rights” from member states of the Organization of American States, found that Mexico had violated human rights laws by failing to investigate these killings diligently and failing to punish officials who mishandled the murder investigations. The Court ordered the Mexican government to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to the families of the three victims. The case, Campo Algodonero, is named for the abandoned cotton fields in which the young women's three bodies were found.
In addition to damage awards, the Court provided an array of holistic remedies:
► a memorial in the field which gave the case its name,
► public recognition by Mexico of its fault in a ceremony and in print,
► a website listing all of the women who have disappeared since 1993,
► payment of money to the families, and
► a requirement that Mexico properly and fully investigate the murders and disappearances.
(Para. 602, subdivisions 1-26.) The Court will monitor Mexico’s progress on these remedies in a year. (Para. 602, subd. 26.)
Professor Caroline Bettinger-López' IntLawGrrls guest post summarized the decision. And Professor Regina Austin provided a take on the burgeoning filmography on the crimes.

The Court’s decision is a landmark.

It interprets not only the American Convention on Human Rights but also, for the first time, asserts its jurisdiction to consider violations of Article 7 of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (“Convention Belém do Pará”). (Paras. 37, 75-77.) The Court found Mexico violated provisions of both Conventions through its indifferent investigation and prosecution of the crimes.

The Court also found -- based in part on Mexico’s admissions in response to reports filed to comply with its obligations as a member state of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- that the indifference to the violence against women here was part of a larger pattern of discrimination. The Court observed:

[T]he subordination of women can be associated with practices based on persistent socially-dominant gender stereotypes, a situation that is exacerbated when the stereotypes are reflected, implicitly or explicitly, in policies and practices and, particularly, in the reasoning and language of the judicial police authorities, as in this case. The creation and use of stereotypes becomes one of the causes and consequences of gender-based violence against women.

(Para. 401.)

The Court further concluded that

when investigating this violence, some authorities mentioned that the victims were ‘flighty’ or that ‘they had run away with their boyfriends . . . this indifference reproduces the violence that it claims to be trying to counter . . . [and] it alone constitutes discrimination regarding access to justice. The impunity of the crimes committed sends the message that violence against women is tolerated; this leads to their perpetuation, together with social acceptance of the phenomenon, the feeling women have that they are not safe, and their persistent mistrust in the system of the administration of justice.

(Para. 400.)

Given this context of structural discrimination, the Court ordered permanent education and training of public officials on human rights and gender with a gender-based perspective as well as educational programs for the general population. (Para. 602, subds. 22, 23.) The Court explained that

training with a gender perspective involves not only learning about laws and regulations, but also developing the capacity to recognize the discrimination that women suffer in their daily life. In particular, the training should enable officials to recognize the effect on women of stereotyped ideas and opinions in relation to the meaning and scope of human rights.

(Para. 540.)

In short, as Judge Diego García Sayán (below left) of Peru, Vice President of the Court, observed in a concurring opinion in the case:

Violence against women is a tragedy with different dimensions and symptoms. Without doubt, it is one of [the] most extended and persistent expressions of discrimination throughout the world, and it is reflected in conduct ranging from subtle and veiled manifestations to inhuman and abusive situations” like those experienced by the women in Juárez.

(García Sayán Conc. Opn., Para. 1.)

Aside from the implications of the decision for international law, however, the decision also provides a helpful barometer of domestic attitudes toward, and perceptions of, international human rights law.

In the United States, the decision frequently prompted three questions from American lawyers and journalists:

► Will the Court’s decision make a difference?

Days after the Court’s decision was announced, the Editorial Board of the El Paso Times, the newspaper of the sister city across the border from Juárez, opined that the decision, while of symbolic importance, was unlikely to make any real difference in the lives of the women in Juárez. At bottom, what the newspaper was openly wondering was: With dubious or untested enforcement powers, can an international court accomplish what Mexico could not – or would not – do alone? From the perspective of American law, this was an obvious question: in the United States, what good is a judgment if you cannot enforce it?

In the international realm, however, which relies on a pastiche of jurisprudence, diplomacy, and moral force, that is not quite the right question to ask.

International condemnation can be a powerful force in effecting change, provided a sense of social pressure and urgency is maintained. The Inter-American Commission (which, like the Inter-American Court, is charged with interpreting the American Convention) previously concluded that Brazil had violated human rights treaties by delaying for more than 15 years the prosecution of Maria da Penha’s abusive husband for her attempted murder. In response to the decision, and after advocates continued to lobby for change, Brazil enacted the Maria da Penha law to provide protection from and remedies for domestic violence at the national level.

► What significance are the non-monetary remedies?

American lawyers and courts focus not just on the enforceability of judgments, but on how much money the judgments allow a plaintiff to collect. Understandably, then, many lawyers asked me how much money the court had awarded. When I elaborated on the other remedies the Court had ordered, the reaction was decidedly less enthusiastic: what use is an apology, and how much could it matter? When a government has repeatedly denied either that there is a problem or that it can or should be responsible for its misconduct, a court-ordered apology is a healing act. Indeed, as the Campo Algodonero Court observed:

International case law has established repeatedly that a judgment declaring a violation of rights constitutes, per se, a form of reparation.

(Para. 582.) The society will have an opportunity to heal further when Mexican newspapers and the country’s government records publish the designated portions of the Court’s decision, when a memorial is placed in the cotton field site, and when Mexico acknowledges responsibility for its apathy and mishandling of the investigations of the girls’ killers at a public ceremony. And, when effective legislation and police procedures are in place, broader-based societal change will be possible. The remedies provided by the Court will then become tangible.

Indeed, Juárez' mayor has already responded to the portion of the Court’s decision requiring the placement of a monument in honor of all women and girls whose deaths went unredressed in the region. On January 30, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported that Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz has called for artists nationwide to submit proposals for the memorial’s design on land donated by the city. According to the Sun-News, the victims’ families will be asked to review and approve the final design, which the mayor said

'must be something that represents what we feel about the deaths and that acknowledges our past errors, which were real and caused us pain. It must also demonstrate our commitment to never let this happen again in Juárez.'

► Why focus on violence against women and girls when Ciudad Juárez is now riddled with widespread violence?

Journalists to whom I spoke about the decision frequently asked why they should focus on violence against women and girls when violence was now so widespread in the city. Violence against women and girls deserves special attention for a number of reasons. First, as Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn persuasively argue in the book Half the Sky (recent review by IntLawGrrl Karen E. Bravo), empowering women and girls is the fastest way to lift the developing world out of poverty. The young women murdered in Juárez were students and workers drawn to the factories that had sprung up throughout the town in response to NAFTA. These were women who were killed while trying to improve their economic condition.

Moreover, how a society treats its most vulnerable members -- and low-income women and girls are especially vulnerable, particularly in developing countries – can provide an overall barometer of that society.

In Ciudad Juárez, violence against women and girls was a harbinger of things to come. Over fifteen years ago, women and girls began to be killed with brutality and impunity. Today thousands of people are killed indiscriminately in the city. A city that has been declared the most dangerous in the world. For both men and women.