Guest Blogger: Ioana Cismas

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Ioana Cismas (right) as today's guest blogger.
Ioana is a researcher with the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Switzerland. She is further offering legal support to one of the members of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council. She's also been an adviser to the Romanian Minister of European Integration. Ioana has previously worked in the research and policy analysis units of nongovernmental organizations and research centers, focusing on humanitarian engagement of nonstate actors and on corporate complicity in international crimes. As a doctoral candidate in international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Ioana is exploring the rights and obligations under international law of religious actors, state and non-state. She aims to propose an accountability framework for religious actors.
Ioana holds a master's degree in international affairs from the Graduate Institute and a double bachelor's degree in political science and sociology from the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania.
Ioana examines the question of remedial secession as it applies to Kosovo in her guest post below. In so doing, she builds on the article she published earlier this year in the Goettingen Journal of International Law. (The GoJIL advisory board includes a number of our European colleagues, including Göttingen's Kai Ambos and Andreas Paulus, judges on Germany's State Court and Constitutional Court, respectively.)
Ioana dedicates her post

to the women of the Balkans, irrespective of ethnicity, nationality, religion and political allegiances, who have 'fought' to live their lives despite the many wars and conflicts.

Heartfelt welcome!

In honor of Maître Alice Roullet-Piccard & Dr. Dorothea May Moore

(Today's IntLawGrrls guest blogger, Claire Moore Dickerson, has chosen to dedicate her contribution to 2 foremothers)

I am delighted to participate in this project, and would like to dedicate my contribution to two formidable professional women whom I knew well and continue to admire fiercely.

Maître Alice Roullet-Piccard (right), born in 1890, received her degree in law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva in 1912, and in 1914 was among the first woman admitted to the bar in Geneva. She opened a law office with her husband, a former classmate at university. From that perch she practiced law until her death in 1972, frequently representing wards of the state and the indigent. She also raised three children.

She became an institution within the Geneva bar. Walking in her wake through the city was a slow process: as she proceeded through the streets, stately, under full sail, she would be greeted by colleagues and clients. To her granddaughter, Maître Roullet-Piccard seemed in total command and absolutely fearless.

Dr. Dorothea May Moore (below right) was my pediatrician (and my first cousin). Tall and spare, her gray hair was swept up in a 1930s style, and her voice was slightly gravely but very elegant. Her gray eyes framed by steel-rimmed glasses, she offered her small patients an unfailingly bemused gaze, inviting and intimidating at once.

Born in 1894, she graduated from college in 1915 and medical school in 1922. She had her own practice, engaged in research, and taught at Harvard Medical School for over 30 years, where she was the first woman instructor in pediatrics. She continued to work under her maiden name even after her marriage in 1941, and, having started in medicine before the advent of antibiotics, persisted in her chosen her profession long after many of her age cohort had retired. She died just 15 years ago, at the age of 101.

Even as a girl, I understood both that the paths chosen by Maître Roullet-Piccard and Dr. Moore had been hard, and that their example made my own path smoother.

On February 5

On this day in ...
... 1997, Crédit Suisse, the Swiss Bank Corporation, and Union Bank of Switzerland, the 3 largest banks in Switzerland, announced the establishment of a '''humanitarian fund for the victims of the Holocaust,'' with an initial worth of around $70 million." The move marked the 1st offer of banks' own funds, and was, according to this New York Times report, an effort "to head off threats from them and from New York institutions of sanctions against Swiss banks, a pillar of the Swiss economy, that would further harm" reputations "battered" by "Switzerland's close financial relationship with Nazi Germany."

(Prior February 5 posts are here and here.)

Polanski Polemics

So there I was listening to the morning news in Paris when I heard that Roman Polanski (right), the director of Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist, had been arrested in Switzerland in response to a 30-year-old international warrant issued by the United States seeking to bring Polanski to trial for "having had sex" with a 13-year-old girl. The word "rape" was avoided; the focus was on the Swiss "treachery" of inviting Polanski to a film festival (to award him a prize) and then arresting him.
Then French politicos and "intellos" got into it, and got ugly when openly gay culture minister Fréderic Mitterand (nephew of former President François Mitterand) expressed his support for Polanski (as have many French intellectuals) and was attacked as a pedophile (based on his book La Mauvaise Vie, in which he tells of his encounters with young male Thai prostitutes). Various ministers and sub-ministers put in their 2 cents, then had to retract, and voilà! The "Polanski affair" became the "Mitterand affair." Meanwhile I'm thinking, "what about the girl?" Le Courrier International (a French Utne Reader), read my thoughts and rounded up some great articles from various papers around the world. In short, like several Italian terrorists of the 1970s, after fleeing the US, Polanski found refuge in France, where artistic geniuses may be indulged to the point of impunity. Thus the "Polanski affair" has renewed the Franco-American culture war: the French see the Americans as uptight Puritans overreacting to a man having sex with an adolescent girl, while the Americans see the French as a bunch of lascivious libertines (for a lighter take on the cross-cultural issue see this Doonesbury strip and keep clicking "next"). But as Brendan O'Neill points out in his "culture war" article, the case has also quite unfortunately become a war between victims: then 13-year-old Samantha Gailey, sedated, raped & sodomized by a 44-year-old man; and Polanski, a Holocaust victim--the holiest of victims, untouchable in guilt-ridden Europe because he has already suffered the unspeakable. Never mind that as one who has suffered, you'd think he be reticent to inflict suffering on others.
Missing from the polemic is any idea of justice: Polanski admitted his guilt back in '77, the issue now is how to repair the victim and punish the perpetrator more than 30 years after the crime. Ellen Snortland has a great suggestion: in her open letter to Polanski, she asks him to back her film on violence against girls and women, a sentence that would no doubt do more for society, and perhaps Polanski's rehabilitation, than locking him up. Meanwhile, as the intellectuals line up behind him, the Swiss are digging in their heels and refusing to release Polanski, who is fighting extradition.

State Department invokes VCCR

'The Swiss ambassador did today receive formal notification by the Iranian government that it has three Americans in detention. Iran has obligations under the Vienna Convention, and we demand consular access at the first opportunity.'

Thus commented Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. State Department, yesterday on what CNN called "the first official notice through diplomatic channels," confirming reports that 3 American students were arrested recently "when they strayed across the border while hiking in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan." (map credit) The channel went Iran-to-Switzerland-to-United States because, as we noted a while back, the countries at either end of the chain do not have diplomatic relations with one another. A glance through IntLawGrrls' prior posts regarding the treaty to which Crowley referred -- the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, as it has played out in cases like Medellín v. Texas (U.S. Supreme Court, 2007) and United States v. Iran (International Court of Justice, 1980) -- will place Crowley's comment in further context.

On April 10

On this day in ...

... 1874 (135 years ago today), the 1st official Arbor Day was celebrated, in Nebraska, by proclamation of that state's Board of Agriculture. "Prizes were offered to counties and individuals for planting the largest number of trees," and it's "estimated that more than one million trees were planted in Nebraska" on that day alone. Over the years the idea took root. The U.S. government celebrates it on the last Friday in April -- this year, April 27. Various states opt for various dates, no doubt in keeping with varied planting seasons. Same holds for countries outside the United States:

Variations are celebrated as 'Greening Week' of Japan, 'The New Year's Days of Trees' in Israel, 'The Tree-loving Week' of Korea, 'The Reforestation Week' of Yugoslavia, 'The Students' Afforestation Day' of Iceland and 'The National Festival of Tree Planting' in India.

It is, after all, the fact, and not the day, of planting that matters.

... 1963, Doris Leuthard (right) was born in Merenschwand, Switzerland. In 2006 Leuthard was elected to the Swiss Federal Council, making her the Council's 5th woman member ever (another, elected in 2002, is Micheline Calmy-Rey, about whom we've also posted). Leuthard is now the Vice President of the Federal Council, which constitutes the executive authority of the Swiss government. She is also Head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, and thus in charge of Swiss economic, labor, and trade policies, among them conduct of Doha Round negotiations of the World Trade Organization. An attorney by training, she had been President of Switzerland's Christian Democratic People's Party before joining the Federal Council. (photo credit)


(Prior April 10 posts are here and here.)

On August 1

On this day in ...
... 1975, more than 3 dozen states, including all of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, signed the Helsinki Final Act. The document, which included "a list of agreements concerning political freedom, mutual cooperation, and human rights; it can be considered the major achievement of détente," the name given to the Cold War thawing process. Part of the process included establishment of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, later renamed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a body whose 56 member states hail from Europe, Central Asia, and North America. (credit for photo of signing by, from left, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, East German leader Erich Honecker, and U.S. President Gerald Ford)
... 1291, the Old Swiss Confederation was founded as an alliance for peace and free trade among various communities in Europe's Alps. Today remains a national holiday in Switzerland. (map credit)

Speaking power to a truth

A truth:

In mid-July, Swiss authorities arrested Hannibal Gadhafi, the youngest son of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, on charges that he and his wife severely beat 2 of their servants, a Moroccan man and a Tunisian woman, "at a luxury hotel in Geneva," the lakeside city renowned for the Jet d'eau at left. Gadhafi, whom a French court had given a 4-month suspended sentence and fined the equivalent of $790 for having hits his then-girlfriend, "were released after Libyan diplomats apologised." The Gadhafis were released and left Switzerland.

Power:

This week Libya halted all oil shipments to Switzerland in retaliation for the arrest. The North African country supplies more than half of the Alpine country's crude oil imports.

Switzerland has warned its nationals not to travel to Libya.

On February 7, ...

... 1971, Switzerland's all-male electorate voted 621,403 to 323,596 to permit Swiss women to vote in federal elections. The result surprised pundits, who expected a repeat of 1959, when, following an antisuffrage campaign whose slogan was Kinder, Kirche und Küche -- Children, Church and Kitchen -- a similar proposal was defeated by a 2 to 1 ratio.
... 2008 (today) , much of the world, especially folks in Asia and Asia-influenced communities throughout the world celebrate the Lunar New Year. It's out with the Pig and onto the Year of the Rat (left) in this year 4705 on the ancient calendar.

[W]e can expect 12 months of plentiful opportunities and prospects not to mention being relatively free of turbulence, (which is great to know especially if you're planning on making some long-term investments, starting new projects, or keeping the home fires burning brightly).

Thank goodness!

On December 13, ...

... 2006, Micheline Calmy-Rey (right), head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland’s foreign ministry, was elected President of the Swiss Federation for the calendar year of 2007. Calmy-Rey was born in Chermignon in Canton Valais on July 8, 1945. (photo credit)
... 1972 (35 years ago today), U.S. astronaut Eugene Cernan began what would be the last human walk on the moon for decades. Upon returning to his craft he expressed a desire that humans would return "with peace and hope for all mankind" -- a phrase that echoed the inscription on a plaque that his mission, Apollo 17, left on the moon's surface: "May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind."
... 1942, U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Cal.) was born in New Britain, Connecticut.