On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1945 (65 years ago today), Gabriela Mistral addressed a banquet at City Hall in Stockholm, where earlier in the day she'd been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She stressed the bonds between Sweden and her own country:

As a daughter of Chilean democracy, I am moved to have before me a representative of the Swedish democratic tradition, a tradition whose originality consists in perpetually renewing itself within the framework of the most valuable creations of society. ...
At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune, I am the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues. Both rejoice to have been invited to this festival of Nordic life with its tradition of centuries of folklore and poetry.

Mistral (prior posts), who'd been born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga 56 years earlier, was not only a renowned poet, but also a diplomat, serving on League of Nations cultural committee and as a Chilean consul in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. (credit for photo of 5,000-peso note honoring her) She's the transnational foremother of IntLawGrrl Naomi Roht-Arriaza.

(Prior December 10 posts are here, here, and here.)

On October 27

On this day in ...
... 1885 (125 years ago today), Sigrid Hjertén (left) was born in Sundsvall, Sweden. Following university studies in the teaching of art, Hjertén, then in her mid-20s, met an art student (her future husband) who persuaded her that she had a future in painting. The 2 subsequently studied with Henri Matisse in Paris. Hjertén painted for 3 decades and "is considered a major figure in Swedish modernism." (credit for 1916 painting by her, at right) Her career ended when, suffering from schizophrenia, she was lobotomized. Hjertén died in Stockholm in 1948, at age 62.

(Prior October 27 posts are here, here, and here.)

On September 3

On this day in ...
... 1992, meeting at Geneva, Switzerland, the multilateral Conference on Disarmament adopted a draft text for the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, which then was transmitted in the Conference Report to the U.N. General Assembly. The adoption culminated efforts dating at least to 1968, when Sweden placed discussion of chemical weapons curtailment on the active agenda of a conference then known as the 18 Nations Disarmament Committee, chaired jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union. The chemical weapons treaty would enter into force on April 26,1997. As of May 2009 it had 188 states parties, including the United States.

(Prior September 3 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 23

On this day in ...
... 1945 (65 years ago today), 7,000 women inmates of Ravensbrück concentration camp were turned over to the Swedish Red Cross, which brought them to be cared for in Sweden, a neutral country during World War II. (credit for photo showing chalk marks on back of prisoners selected to go to Sweden) The transfer resulted from negotiations between Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte and the head of the Nazi SS. Within days the SS would evacuate 15,000 other inmates on a forced death march. At month's end Soviet troops would liberate the camp, finding still there as many as 3,000 sick and dying inmates. In its 6 years of existence, the eastern Germany camp had housed more than 120,000 prisoners, all but 20,000 of whom were women; tens of thousands died there. Many others were subjected to medical experimentation, for which some officials would, as we've posted, stand trial at Nuremberg and elsewhere.

(Prior April 23 posts are here, here, and here)

On March 25

On this day in ...
... 2010 (today), is celebrated Våffeldagen, also known as International Waffle Day. Våffeldagen originated in Sweden, where the yummy treats were served on this day to mark the Feast of the Annunciation, itself also known as Lady Day. How in English translation Våffeldagen became to be called "International" is unclear, and in any event it's a misnomer: American contrarians have declared August 24 -- the date in 1839 when a patent for the waffle iron issued -- to be Waffle Day in the United States.

(Prior March 25 posts are here, here, and here)

Law & migration & mothers & children

What a treat to have moderated the opening session of Uprooted: The International Migration of Children, the symposium that 2 student journals here at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) -- our Journal of Juvenile Law and Policy and our Journal of International Law and Policy -- cosponsored on Friday. (prior post)
Titled "The International Context that Pushes Migration," the session provided a rich overview of the causes, conditions, and effects on families of transnational migration trends.
1st up was our colleague Chivy Sok (right), whose career in human rights advocacy includes current service as a member of the Steering Committee of the Ginetta Sagan Fund of Amnesty International USA, as well as prior human rights center leadership at Columbia University and the University of Iowa. Chivy told of her own childhood picking onions for hours in U.S. fields alongside others in her Cambodian refugee family. Chivy then placed her experience in context. More than 200 million children labor worldwide, she said. Three-quarters work in agriculture. Agricultural hazards -- injuries from equipment, harms from pesticides -- constitute a leading cause of death among children. Many of these children have no access to education, to health care, even to basic hygiene. Sok pointed to the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, legislation that U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) introduced in Congress last fall, as a potential means to address these problems.
Following Chivy was Jayne E. Fleming (left), Pro Bono Counsel at Reed Smith in San Francisco and the subject of a recent profile in the National Law Journal. (photo credit) Jayne recounted the forces of migration through stories about clients who live and work at a garbage dump in Guatemala. Economic forces of course play a role, she said, adding:

Extreme poverty is absolutely a human rights violation.

Other forces of migration emerged during the session, among them: implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement; political violence and armed conflict; family disintegration; sexual exploitation or incest.
Yet another force was at the center of remarks by the session's 3d speaker, Dr. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (right). Some women migrate not out of sheer desperation, she said, but out of desire to improve their family's economic and social mobility. Professor of American Studies and Sociology at Brown University, Rhacel told what she'd learned her ethnographic research on globalized domestic workers. She focused on how laws break up families, compelling mothers to leave their children behind when go abroad to work. Once there, mothers find themselves infantilized by law -- assigned the legal status not of an employee, but rather of a member of the employer's family. They must depend on employers to treat them well, and they discover, when employers do not, that national labor laws do not protect them. This vulnerable status prevails in countries that pride themselves on human rights records -- Rhacel named Denmark and Sweden in particular -- as well as in those that do not. One reason? A "maternalist ideology" by which "various states are in denial that mothers are leaving the home," and so fail to take measures to protect the migrant domestic workers who care for the home in their stead.

Kudos to these excellent speakers, to journal editors Eve Epstein and Monica Feltz and their staffs, and responsible for putting together this stimulating panel.

(Cross-posted at California-Davis Law Faculty Blog)

On January 21

On this day in ...
... 1720 (290 years ago today), Sweden and Prussia signed the Treaty of Stockholm, in which Sweden promised to cede southern Pommern, part of a province also known as Pomerania, which had been part of northern Germany until 715, in exchange for Prussia's payment of 1 million Swedish riksdaler.

(Prior January 21 posts are here and here.)

On August 13

On this day in ...
… 1762, Anne Josephe Théroigne de Méricourt (right), French revolutionary and feminist, was born in Marcourt, Luxembourg province, in modern Belgium. (image credit) She called for equality with men with an eloquence that was vigrous even for the National Assembly of the day. She demanded that women be permitted to arm themselves and to enlist in the army:

Fellow women citizens, why should we not enter into rivalry with the men? . . . And we too would wish to earn a civic crown and court the honor of dying for a liberty which is dearer perhaps to us than it is to them, since the effects of despotism weigh still more heavily upon our heads than upon theirs. . . . let us open a list of French Amazons; and let all who truly love their Fatherland write their names there.

... 1905, Norwegians voted overwhelmingly -- 368,208 to 184 -- in favor of dissolving the union of Norway and Sweden. This followed by a couple months a similar action in Sweden's legislature (prior post), and dissolution took effect later in the year.

(Prior August 13 posts are here and here.)

On July 5

On this day in ...
... 1934 (75 years ago today), on what was known as San Francisco's Bloody Thursday, rioting involving thousands of persons along the waterfront resulted in 3 deaths and a score of injuries. Police clashed with striking union members, and bystanders were caught in the melee as strikers hurled tear gas canisters thrown at them back at police. (photo credit) The governor called out the National Guard on this day, nearly 2 months after labor protests had begun in the city. The day ended with International Longshoremen's Association leader Harry Bridges -- later the victor in immigration and false statements cases before the U.S. Supreme Court -- going to City Hall to protest police actions.
... 1944 (65 years ago today), Leni Björklund (right) was born in Sweden. Following her childhood in the community of Örebro, she earned a bachelor's degree at Uppsala University, and then entered politics. A member of the Social Democratic Party, from 2002 to 2006 Björklund served as Sweden's Minister for Defence -- the 1st woman, and the 1st person who'd not served in the military -- to hold that post.

(Prior July 5 posts are here and here.)

On June 7

On this day in ...

... 1892, Wyoming alternate delegates Theresa A. Jenkins and Cora Carleton attended the GOP National Convention, marking the 1st time women held an official position at the convention of either major political party. The convention also featured a speech by attorney and temperance advocate J. Ellen Foster (right), President of the Women's National Republican Association, an Iowa-born political operative who "masterminded the Republican vote-getting operation in parts of New York City." (photo credit) Two years earlier, Foster and her contemporaries had been featured in Women Lawyers in the United States, an article published by attorney Lelia J. Robinson in the 1st iteration of The Green Bag, a U.S. law journal that was revived several years ago.

... 1905, Sweden's Parliament unanimously declared the dissolution of the union with Norway that had been in effect since the conclusion in 1814 of the Convention of Moss. The dissolution would become mutual in October, when each country became an independent kingdom. (credit for image of diplomatic flag of Sweden-Norway union)

(Prior June 7 posts are here and here.)

On June 6

On this day in ...
... 1654 (355 years ago today), Sweden's Queen Christina abdicated the throne, transferring her power to her cousin, Charles Gustavus of Pfalz-Zweibrücken. She had been born in December 1626, the only heir to her father the king, who'd ordered her educated as a boy. She became queen at age 6 when her father died. Among her achievements was to have "initiated the end of the Thirty Years War, culminating with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648." Immediately after her abdication Christina (left) began traveling, and soon made a public conversion from the Lutheranism of her childhood to Catholicism. Subsequently she became embroiled in various schemes to rule various places, none of which succeeded. She died in 1689 and was buried in St. Peter's in Vatican City, "an unusual honor for a woman." (image credit)
... 1973, faced with a backlog of 17,462 immigration cases, only a hundred of which it could process in any given month, the Canadian government launched a program to help undocumented immigrants become Canadian citizens. More than 50,000 persons would apply for landed immigrant status in the next 4 months.

(Prior June 6 posts are here and here.)

On May 22

On this day in ...

... 1992, the General Assembly resolutions admitted 3 new U.N. member states, Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia. All formerly had been part of the state then known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but broke off, following armed conflicts of varying length and brutality, in the aftermath of the 1980 death of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, who'd ruled the SFRY with an iron hand since 1953. (map credit)

... 1762, the empires of Sweden and Prussia concluded the Treaty of Hamburg, bringing an end to conflict between the 2 countries during the Seven Years War (1756-63) and returning to the territorial status quo as it had existed between those countries before that war began. The alliance was desired by Prussia after it had broken off relations with the Russian empire.

(Prior May 22 posts are here and here.)

On September 10

On this day in ...
... 2003 (5 years ago today), Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed fatally while shopping in Stockholm. She died the next day. Lindh (left), 46, an immensely popular politician, had been expected eventually to become Sweden's Prime Minister. A man was convicted of Lindh's murder; however, in 2004 his life sentence was overturned, and the assailant was committed to a mental institution. (credit for AP photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
... 1971, a day after guards "forcefully suppress[ed] a scuffle" and transferred 2 prisoners to isolation cells in an overcrowded state penitentiary just south of Buffalo, New York, the riot at Attica prison (below) escalated:

[V]iolence boiled over when a group of inmates managed to leave their cells and force their way into the prison’s nerve center, where they beat several guards with pieces of pipe, lengths of chain, and baseball bats, fatally injuring one of them.
More than one thousand strong, the inmates quickly took control of the prison and set fire to several of its buildings. By the time the state police was summoned and managed to recapture part of the facility that afternoon, the inmates had regrouped in one of the yards and were holding 40 hostages in a ring of wooden benches.

The uprising would end days later with more bloodshed. Nearly 3 decades later, litigation ended with a federal court approving a settlement of $8 million "to compensate more than 500 inmates and relatives for the abuse that the prisoners suffered."

The Limits of Refugee Law

In my Refugee Law and Policy class this week, we discussed the plight of those who are forcibly displaced from their homes but do not meet the 1951 UN Refugee Convention's definition of a refugee. These include people fleeing generalized violence and civil strife who cannot show that they have been individually targeted for persecution, as well as people who do not have the resources or ability to cross an international border. The former may receive some type of temporary protection while their home country remains dangerous, and the latter, known as internally displaced persons, are protected by vague provisions of international human rights law and the non-binding Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. While the Guiding Principles have gained some traction in national laws and policies, in both circumstances, the fate of these individuals is left in the hands of sovereigns with little recourse to enforceable international legal standards or protection.

In a generous mood, a developed country might offer temporary protection to say, Zimbabweans fleeing the widespread human rights abuses committed under Robert Mugabe's regime (posted on here) or to Iraqis fleeing the well-documented dangers of their home country. Despite little improvement in either situation, two developed countries have change their mind about protecting individuals fleeing Iraq and Zimbabwe who do not fall squarely within the UN Refugee Convention definition. In the UK this week, some 500 Zimbabweans whose asylum applications were denied were told to pack their bags or face expulsion. This follows last year's overturning of an earlier ban on deportation of Zimbabweans, with a judge finding that only those linked to opposition political parties were likely to face persecution. And it turns out that Sweden has been deporting Iraqis from the southern and central regions of that country who cannot prove that they will be individually persecuted, based on an immigration court's ruling that there "is no armed conflict in Iraq, according to the definition from Swedish legislation." The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees this week criticized Sweden's return policy, noting that "[t]he level of human rights violations and violence along sectarian and intra-sectarian lines remain high in both central and southern Iraq", so individuals from those areas should be considered refugees.

Once returned, these individuals are likely to join the already overwhelming number of internally displaced in their home country -- at last count, 2.25 million in Iraq and 570,000 in Zimbabwe. They face the sword of sovereignty at every turn -- the sovereign authority of nations over both entry across their borders and the people and resources within their territory -- but little in the way of protection from international law or the international community. While the movement towards viewing sovereignty as responsibility may address some concerns about the treatment of the internally displaced, the notion of humanitarian intervention implicates real concerns about the power of weak states to defend their territorial integrity and political independence. And stronger states will not easily relinquish the power to control their borders. So how can we forge a solution for these individuals whose lives are at risk? A true dilemma for the humanitarians among us, and one that displays the limits of refugee law and international human rights law more generally.

On January 20, ...

... 1981, minutes after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan to succeed Jimmy Carter as U.S. President, Iran released 52 hostages held since the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran 444 days earlier. The New York Times reported that Carter "look[ed] haggard and worn after spending two largely sleepless nights trying to resolve the hostage crisis as the final chapter of his Presidency." The ex-President planned "to fly to West Germany early tomorrow to greet the hostages personally at the invitation of" Reagan, "the man who defeated him for re-election."
... 1956, Maria Larsson (right) was born in Långasjö, Småland, Sweden. A onetime schoolteacher, Larsson eventually became active in Christian Democratic party politics in her country. She's served as Sweden's Minister for Elderly Care and Public Health, in the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, since 2006.
... 1951, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) was born in New York.

On October 22,

... 1999, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1270, which established the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, a country torn apart by a decade of civil war. The UNAMSIL complement was to include 6,000 military troops, among them 260 military observers. This mission was completed in December 2005; today the "United Nations Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) ... help[s] consolidate peace in the country."
... 1958, Blanche Margaret Meagher (right), formerly a high school teacher, was appointed Ambassador to Israel, making her Canada's 1st woman Ambassador. She held the position until 1961; thereafter she served as Ambassador to Austria and to Sweden. She was Canada's governor on, and later chairman of, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and also helped negotiate the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and the People's Republic of China. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1911, Meagher died in her hometown in 1999.

¡Pero está la Comisión, sí!

Despite the violence Anna Koransky chronicles above, there is some cause for optimism: after hours of what the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre termed "unpredictable" debate on Wednesday, 110 of 133 Members of Congress approved the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad de Guatemala. (photo of vote by Esbin García courtesy of Prensa Libre)
As posted here, this anti-impunity commission will comprise U.N.-selected international experts who will endeavor for 2 years to assist Guatemalan prosecutors in investigating and bringing to justice persons responsible for crime and atrocity in the country. Human rights campaigner Helen Mack, in an interview with Prensa Libre, predicted that the Commission "will not be the panacea, but it will initiate proceedings that eventually will bear fruit."
The commission, which may begin work as early as November, is expected to receive funding from Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.

Reisekarte von Nürnberg

Wish you’d been there:
Just back from a megaconference, Building a Future on Peace and Justice, cosponsored by the governments of Finland, Germany, and Jordan, the International Center on Transitional Justice, and Crisis Management Initiative. Standing in the same courtroom (above) where the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg once tried vanquished Nazis for war crimes, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier opened the event by stating that it was there that Germany began its "return to the community of respected nations."
Conference highlights:
► The insistence on the presence of women at every peace parley, by Elisabeth Rehn (below), who's served as Sweden's 1st woman Minister of Defence and as Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rehn cited the view of some women she’d met in conflict situations: "‘The men have messed up enough. Now it’s time for us.’" She concluded, "Women have to be at the negotiating table."
► Statements by stakeholders, among them Rwot David Onen Acana II, Paramount Chief of the Acholi people involved in peace talks over Northern Uganda.
► The number and variety of participants, ranging from Prince Zeid Ra’Ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States and former President of the International Criminal Court's Assembly of States Parties, to a host of women and men who do humanitarian work in the world’s most troubled regions.
Proceedings are to provide the basis for a 2008 Nuremberg Declaration on Peace and Justice.