Guest Blogger: Rebecca Wright

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Rebecca Wright (right) as today's guest blogger.
Rebecca is the Legal Advisor for the North African Litigation Initiative (NALI) at the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). NALI aims to raise awareness of the African human rights system in six target countries: Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan. It assists human rights defenders from these countries to bring cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights by holding training workshops and hosting potential litigants at the Ordinary Sessions of the Commission. In her guest post below, Rebecca discusses this work and further describes a recent human rights defenders workshop that NALI hosted in Tunisia.
Rebecca joined EIPR in 2007 after receiving a Harvard Law School Heningson Fellowship. She worked in Egypt for a year before traveling to Afghanistan to conduct research on the cost of conflict for civilians for CIVIC, a Washington, D.C.-based nongovernmental organization. She returned to Afghanistan on two other occasions to work for the Afghan NGO Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium on workers’ rights, provincial governance, and women’s leadership. After also working in Qatar and Lebanon, Rebecca returned to EIPR in April 2010 in order to help establish NALI.
Rebecca earned her J.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation analysed the concept of female heroism in the autobiographies of British suffragists, and today she honors one of those women:

I would like my transnational foremother to be Sylvia Pankhurst [left]. I wrote one of the chapters of my PhD on her. She and the other suffragettes I studied inspired me to become a woman of action and to pursue causes that are just, including those outside the UK.

Pankhurst (1882-1960) joins other IntLawGrrls foremothers -- including her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst (prior posts) -- in the list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

For the Sake of the Children

On Tuesday, following an increasingly interesting avenue for vindicating the human rights of undocumented immigrants, the Appeal Court in the Hague and the High Court in London issued decisions upholding the rights of the children of failed asylum seekers. Both courts applied the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in finding the state practices unlawful. Though each court was careful to apply the convention narrowly, these decisions may be part of a trend that may expand protection of migrants through the rights of their children.
In the Dutch case, a failed Angolan asylum seeker and her three minor children won the right "not to be put out on the street." In other words, though the woman has refused to cooperate with efforts to remove her, the Appeal Court in the Hague held that the Dutch state is obligated to provide shelter and care to her and her children until they leave the country or the children reach the age of majority. The state had wanted to place the children in foster care to facilitate deportation the mother, but the court decided that the children's right to family unity overrode the state interest in immigration enforcement. The opinion draws on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, focusing on the children's right to a family life under Article 8. Though the Dutch court notes that the expansion of immigration status under Article 8 is limited, it distinguishes this case as determining whether the government could kick the family out of the free refugee housing center in which they resided, not whether the mother could obtain lawful immigration status.
In the English case, the High Court considered the legality of the detention of the minor children of failed asylum seekers. The court read the UK Home Department's written policy to require that families with children be detained only in exceptional circumstances, but found that these limits on detention of children were not applied in practice. The opinion draws on several reports by British officials, including the Chief Inspector of Prisons, the Children's Commissioner for England, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, and the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, all of which harshly criticized the practice of detention of children for sustained periods of time. Though the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been incorporated into UK domestic law, the court held that UK immigration law requires compliance with Articles 3 and 37(b) of the treaty, protecting the best interests of the child and prohibiting arbitrary detention, in decisions to detain children. Moreover, the court found a violation of Article 5 of the ECHR, which protects against arbitrary detention.
These decisions are a far cry from extending a right to residency to undocumented migrants, even those with minor children who face unstable and potentially violent situations in their home countries. Yet they fill important gaps in protection, and offer a creative route for expanding the human rights of those who are often left vulnerable under domestic laws and practices. For those of us beyond the jurisdiction of the ECHR, the decisions offer a tantalizing glimpse of the impact of a robust supranational human rights regime on domestic law and policy on the treatment of migrants. And though the holdings are modest, the use of human rights language with respect to undocumented immigrants and their children and the explicit prioritizing of their rights as individuals over the state's interest in enforcement (as compared to the federal preemption analyses used to assess the rights of immigrants in recent U.S. decisions) holds significant expressive power.


(translation of the Dutch Appeal Court decision, and all errors therein, are mine; a newsclip about the case with English subtitles is available here)

On October 13

On this day in ...
... 1862, Mary Henrietta Kingsley (top left) was born in Islington, England. She received no formal education but was taught German by her father, a traveler and writer, because it then was the language of medical research. Kingsley taught herself from the many books in her father's library. At age 29 her parents died within weeks of each other; thereafter what had been a vicarious life of travel became a real one. Kingsley ventured out in 1893, "[d]ressed in a stiff black skirt and blouse, with high buttoned shoes and a perky hat." She explained her choice of clothing thusly:

'You have no right to go about Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home.'

Kingsley would make a number of journeys to West and Central Africa, bring back to England new animals, and write books that increased English knowledge of the continent to Europe's south -- and unlike missionaries of the time, she defended indigenous practices, such as polygamy. Among her bestsellers was Travels in West Africa (1897). Kingsley died of enteric fever in 1900, while serving as a nurse in the Boer War in South Africa.

(Prior October 13 posts are here, here, and here.)

On September 13

On this day in ...
... 1865 (145 years ago today), a daughter, Maud, was born into an Anglican clerical family in England. Active on social welfare issues, as a teenager she helped organized a branch of the Salvation Army in Paris, France. Efforts to do the same in Switzerland met with imprisonment before success. Known as the "Little Mother of the Prisons," Maud performed social work in London's slums and campaigned for prison reform. Maud Ballington Booth (right) and her husband, a son of the Salvation Army's founder, attained U.S. citizenship and established the Volunteers of America. (photo credit) She died on August 26, 1948, in New York.

(Prior September 13 posts are here, here, and here.)

On May 21

On this day in ...
... 1780 (230 years ago today), a daughter, Elizabeth, was born into a banking family in Norwich, England. They were "'relaxed'" Quakers, dressing in clothes more colorful and fashionable than was typical for their denomination. Over time she grew more serious, married and gave birth to 11 children. Elizabeth Fry became renowned for her work in English prisons, among them Newgate, where women were detained. Among her achievements was an end to shackling of women convicts during transport. She founded a prisoners' aid society and testified before Parliament. Her work extended beyond prison reform to include aid for the poor, training of nurses, rights for women, and abolition of the death penalty. As posted, societies bearing her name continue to work toward these goals. Fry's been depicted on Britain's £5 note (above right) since 2002. (credit)


(Prior May 21 posts are here, here, and here)

On April 16

On this day in ...

... 1912, Harriet Quimby became the 1st woman to fly solo across the English Channel. Just a year earlier, she'd become the 1st woman to take flying lessons and obtain a pilot's license, having taken a fancy to aviation while a New York-based reporter for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. Clad in the signature plum-colored costume at right, she took to the exhibition circuit, and continued to write of her airborne adventures. On this morning, inclement weather led Quimby to land on a beach rather than in a field as planned. She wrote of the children, women, and men who gathered 'round her on this day:

'They were chattering in French, of which I comprehended sufficient to discover that they knew I had crossed the channel. These humble fisherfolk knew what had happened. They were congratulating themselves that the first woman to cross in an aeroplane bad landed on their fishing beach.'

Quimby would die in a crash landing in Boston Harbor on July 1 of this same year.

(Prior April 16 posts are here, here, and here)

On April 13

On this day in ...
... 1828, a 7th child, Josephine, was born into the Grey family (relatives of the Prime Minister who leant his name to Earl Grey tea) in Northumberland, England. In 1852 she married George Butler. Josephine Butler (right) had been a feminist since her 20s, and she and her husband were radicals for their times, opposing slavery and supporting the Union during America's Civil War. After the couple's only daughter died, Josephine began to do charity work. She's best known for her campaigns to improve the health and lives of prostituted children and women, by taking part in international campaigns against human trafficking and by eliminating laws that discriminated against prostitutes. Butler, who chronicled her work in a memoir entitled Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (1896), died in 1906.

(Prior April 13 posts are here, here, and here)

On December 1

On this day in ...
... 1761, Marie Grosholtz was born in Strasbourg, France. Eventually she made her way to Versailles, where she was the art tutor of a sister of King Louis XVI. When the French Revolution broke out she was imprisoned as a royalist. But another trade she'd learned -- wax sculpture -- helped her survive:

According to her memoirs, during the Reign of Terror she had the gruesome responsibility of making death masks from head -- frequently those of her friends -- freshly severed by the guillotine.

Following an unsuccessul marriage Marie -- known thereafter as Madame Marie Tussaud -- fled to England with her children and her wax models. There she established Madame Tussauds Museum, to this day a depository of waxen images of celebrities, politicians, and scoundrels, in London and 8 other cities around the world. (credit for photo of wax statue of Tussaud)

(Prior December 1 posts are here and here.)

On September 7

On this day in ...
... 1859 (150 years ago today), beside the Thames in London, England, the Clock Tower at the Houses of Parliament, known as Big Ben, rang quarter-hour chimes for the 1st time. The clock itself had begun keeping time 4 months earlier. Details on the bells and notes are here; some images are here (albeit not the one above right, the Disney scene of Peter Pan and friends flying past the tower so beloved it appeared on a postage stamp (credit)), and the very cool audio-video of the bells being struck is right here:


(Prior September 7 posts are here and here.)

On July 18

On this day in ...
... 1817, following a long illness now thought to have been Addison's Disease, Jane Austen (right) died at age 41 in Winchester, England, and was buried days later in that city's cathedral. This cleric's daughter began writing as a child. Her most memorable works include the novels Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813). She had an incredible talent for crisp characterization and incisive social commentary. No doubt many an IntLawGrrl has not only put herself in the shoes of Austen's plucky heroine Eliza Bennet, but also marveled at Austen herself, who persisted in writing at though few at the time prized women authors. Her tombstone "does not even mention that she was an author."
... 1940, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco claimed for Spain Gibraltar, long a British outpost though on the Iberian peninsula, "not that he expected the British to give it to him but keep Germany from taking it." Today it's an overseas territory of Britain. (credit for photo of the Rock of Gibraltar)


(Prior July 18 posts are here and here.)

In passing: Venetia Burney Phair

(In passing marks the memory of a person featured in IntLawGrrls)

Venetia Burney Phair died on April 30 at age 90 at home in Epsom, south of London, England. As we've posted, she made her mark 8 decades earlier, when as a schoolgirl she suggested that a newly discovered planet be named Pluto. As depicted in the 2008 short film, Naming Pluto (video of trailer below), 11-year-old mythology buff Venetia (left) made the suggestion to her grandfather, an Oxford librarian, who relayed the idea to an Oxford astronomer. The rest is history. Pluto's ignominious 2006 reclassification as a "dwarf planet" by no means dims her celestial achievement. As stated by London's Telegraph, she "had the distinction of being the only woman in the world to have named a planet."

On May 2

On this day in ...
... 1969 (40 years ago today), crackdowns across the country began to quell student protests launched on May Day. At Columbia University, for example, "200 students calling for educational reforms at Columbia University have given up their sit-in after a supreme court judge issued a warrant for their arrest." Parents whose children were named in the order were divided on the protests. And at Stanford University, a "hundred pacifists have also abandoned their demonstration ... after they were met with an equal number of police officers." (credit for photo of Stanford protests in "1960s and 1970s") Nonetheless, the BBC reported,

[M]any universities remain under siege with both black and white students demanding an end to alleged racial discrimination, on-campus military recruitment and a greater share in college government.

... 1969 (40 years ago today), at Southampton, England, the Cunard ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II embarked on its maiden voyage, bound for New York City. The vessel (right), which in 1982 was requisitioned for service in the Falklands/Malvinas War, "is currently docked permanently in Dubai," in the United Arab Emirates.

(Prior May 2 posts are here and here.)

On February 13

On this day in ...
... 1542, Catherine Howard was beheaded for adultery at the Tower of London. Of this queen (below right), the 5th of 6 wives of the English King Henry VIII, this website writes:

Catherine Howard did not have an impact upon English history. She is perhaps the most inconsequential of Henry VIII's six wives, her reign as queen a very brief eighteen months. She bore no children and made no lasting impression upon those who knew her. But it should be remembered that she was thirty years younger than her husband, a silly young girl who never understood the dangers of royal regard. Her life was over before it had truly begun; we can only wonder how it might have ended differently.

Not a word of fault found with the fatally fickle king.
... 1961, officials in the province of Katanga announced that the man who'd served from June to September 1960 as Congo's 1st Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was dead. It was claimed that Lumumba (below left) had been "killed by villagers trying to take him into custody"; however, years later that was deemed not to be the whole truth. According to the BBC:

A Belgian Government inquiry into the murders reported in November 2001 that they would not have taken place without the complicity of Belgian and American intelligence services.
In February 2002 the Belgian Government made its first official apology for its part in the assassinations and has set up a $3m fund to encourage democracy and development in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On January 4

On this day in ...
... 1911, Charlotte E. Ray died on Long Island 60 years after her birth in New York City. The daughter of an abolitionist pastor/publisher, her ancestors included Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the then-brand-new Howard University, in 1872 she became "the first African American woman lawyer in the United States and first woman admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia." She was active in the suffrage and civil rights organizations of the times, but found that "public prejudice" made it difficult to maintain a law practice, and so eventually returned to her 1st career, teaching. Last year Kareem Abdul Jabbar honored Ray with this blog post. (credit for drawing of Ray at left)
... 1717, England, France, and the Netherlands joined together in a Triple Alliance aimed at guaranteeing the Peace of Utrecht, the succession of treaties concluded earlier in the same decade that together established a balance of power in Europe.

On November 6

On this day in ...

... 1153 (855 years ago today) , in England, the Treaty of Wallingford was signed. The pact "effectively ended The Anarchy, a dispute between Empress Matilda [left] and her cousin Stephen of England over the English crown." Matilda, the 1st woman to rule England, did so without challenge for just a year, 1141. The Wallingford accord required her challenger, Stephen, to recognize as his heir Matilda's son, who would be crowned Henry II in 1154.

... 1999, by a margin of 54.87% to 45.13%, Australians voted against "a proposal to break ties with the British monarchy and become a republic." Queen Elizabeth II, the woman who's ruled Britain since in 1952, thus remains Australia's head of state.

On October 20

On this day in ...
... 1988 (20 years ago today), aviator Sheila Scott (left) died 61 years after she'd been born in Worcestershire, England. Scott made history when, in the course of a 34,000-mile flight in 1971, she became the 1st pilot -- woman or man -- "to fly directly over true North Pole in a light aircraft." During this flight the U. S. Navy, which tracked her via satellite, "had orders: 'Don't lose Sheila!'"
... 2003 (5 years ago today), the U.N. General Assembly (below left) passed a resolution condemning what the resolution called "Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory." The action to which the resolution referred was the building of a wall dividing territory. The resolution asked for an advisory opinion on the legality vel non of this act; consequently, the International Court of Justice ruled in mid-2004 that the building of the wall was contrary to international law. (photo credit)

On October 14

On this day in ...
... 1066, in the Battle of Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy, conquered the Anglo-Saxon kingdom "that had resisted Viking invasions for years on end." This Norman "conquest altered the whole outlook of England, ... locking her into a partnership and a struggle with France that was to last for centuries." A consequence of note to lawyers: the prevalence of Norman French words in English jurisprudence. (credit for image of Bayeux tapestry depicting the Norman invasion)
... 1958 (50 years ago today), the nation whose largest land mass is the island of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean to the east of continental Africa, was proclaimed the Republic of Malagasy, independent within the French community.

On September 6

On this day in ...
... 1593 (415 years ago today), in London, my transnational foremother, Grace O’Malley, met, as depicted at right, with England's Queen Elizabeth I. Grace, whose name in Irish is Gráinne Ni Mháille, is said to have extracted concessions permitting her to continue her trade -- piracy -- on the west coast of Ireland.
... 1965, declaring an intention "to prevent a direct attack by Pakistani forces" against it, India ordered its troops to invade West Pakistan, in movements that seemed to be directed at the city of Lahore. A ceasefire would be declared 3 weeks later. The boundary set in the ceasefire has been dubbed the "Line of Control." The dispute over this region continues to this day. (map credit)

On August 24

On this day in ...

... 1215, the Magna Carta (left) -- the document in which King John, in June of the same year, agreed to accord certain liberties to certain Englishmen -- was declared null and void by Pope Innocent III (below right), on the grounds that it was "an agreement exacted by force, which was shameful, demeaning illegal, unjust and derogatory to the king's rights and dignity."




... 1954, the Communist Party effectively was outlawed in the United States when the Communist Control Act went into effect. The legality vel non of the act was never reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On June 2

On this day in ...
... 1953 (55 years ago today), Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey, London, England. Approximately 3 million people lined the streets to catch glimpses of the ceremony in person, while millions more watched in the 1st-ever coronation to be televised live. The New York Times gushed:

[F]or all her glorification she is first of all a wife and mother of two charming children.

Elizabeth had become queen a year earlier, at age 26, upon the death of her father, but the ritual took an additional year to plan.
... 1998 (10 years ago today), "Californians decisively rejected bilingual education" when they "approv[ed] a mandate for English-only instruction known as Proposition 227," by a vote of "61 to 39%." (credit for image by Margaret Scott)