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59 E/CN.6/SR.49, Commission on the Status of Women, Third Session, Summary record of the 49th meeting, Beirut, Lebanon, 28 March 1949, p. 2.
60 E/CN.6/SR.49, Commission on the Status of Women, Third Session, Summary record of the 49th meeting, Beirut, Lebanon, 28 March 1949, p. 7. International welfare feminism 69 61 ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
62 Boris, Hoehtker, and Zimmermann, Women’s ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present, 106.
63 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
64 Poulos, “Transnational Militancy in Cold-War Europe: Gender, Human Rights, ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
66 Doris Linder, “Equality For Women: The Contribution of Scandinavian Women at the United Nations, 1946-66,” Scandinavian Studies 73, no.
2 (2001): 165–208; Sondra Herman, “From International Feminism to Feminist Internationalism: The Emergence of Alva Myrdal, 1936–1955,” PEACE & CHANGE 18, no.
4 (1993): 325–46.
67... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
68 Wendy Pojman, “For Mothers, Peace and Family: International (Non)-Cooperation among Italian Catholic and Communist Women’s Organisation during the Early Cold War,” Gender & History 23, no.
2 (2011): 415–29.
Bibliography Adami, Rebecca.
“Counter Narratives as Political Contestation: Universality, Particularity and... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Adami, Rebecca.
“On Subalternity and Representation: Female and Post Colonial Subjects Claiming Universal Human Rights in 1948.” Journal of Research on Women and Gender 6 (2015b): 56–66.
Adami, Rebecca.
Women and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
New York & London: Routledge, 2019.
Boris, Eileen.
Making ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Women’s ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present.
Leiden & Boston: BRILL, 2008.
Cobble, Dorothy Sue.
“International Women’s Trade Unionism and Education.” International Labor and Working-Class History 90, no.
90 (2016): 153–163.
Donert, Celia.
“From Communist Interna... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
2 (2016): 313–333.
Eisenberg, Jaci.
“The Status of Women: A Bridge from the League of Nations to the United Nations.” JIOS 4, no.
2 (2013): 8–24.
Gaer, Felice.
“Women, International Law and International Institutions: The Case of the United Nations.” Women’s Studies International Forum 32 (2009): 60–66.
Haan, Fra... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Haan, Francisca de.
“Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organisations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).” Women’s History Review 19, no.
4 (2010): 547–573.
Herman, Sondra.
“From International Feminism to Feminist Internationalism: The E... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
4 (1993): 325–346.
Ilic, Melanie.
“Soviet Women, Cultural Exchange and the Women’s International Democratic Federation.” In Reassessing Cold War Europe, edited by Sari Autio- Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, 157–174.
London: Routledge, 2010.
70 Rebecca Adami Laville, Helen.
“A New Era in International Women’s Rights?... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
4 (2008): 34–56.
Linder, Doris.
“Equality For Women: The Contribution of Scandinavian Women at the United Nations, 1946–66.” Scandinavian Studies 73, no.
2 (2001): 165–208.
Maul, Daniel.
The International Labour Organization: 100 Years of Global Social Policy.
Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019.
Moyn, Samuel.
The Last Ut... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Mooney, Jadwiga E. Pieper.
“Fighting Fascism and Forging New Political Activism: The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in the Cold War.” In De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change, edited by Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney and Fabio Lanza, 52–72.
Routledge, 2012.
Pojman, Wendy.
“For Mothers... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
2 (2011): 415–429.
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“Transnational Militancy in Cold-War Europe: Gender, Human Rights, and the WIDF during the Greek Civil War.” European Review of History 24, no.
1 (2017): 17–35.
Riegelman Lubin, Carol, and Anne Winslow.
Social Justice for Women: The International Labor Organization and Women.
... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
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“Hidden from Herstory: Women, Feminism and New Global Solidarity.” Economic and Political Weekly 28, no.
44 (October 30, 1993): WS83–W100.
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Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation.
Baltimore and London: ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
5 Universal human rights for women UN engagement with traditional abuses, 1948–1965 Roland Burke Introduction Across the 1950s and early 1960s, while the UN became progressively more riven by contests on the right to self-determination, racial discrimination, and the relationship between development and political right... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
In December 1954, shortly after the sixth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the General Assembly proclaimed a sweeping programme against “ancient cus- toms” which prevented the realization of the UDHR for women. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Resolution 843 affirmed the supremacy of the UDHR over any custom, and demanded “elimina- tion of such customs, ancient laws and practices,” notably in marriage and family law, which were “inconsistent” with the precepts set down in 1948.1 By 1961, the animating spirit of Resolution 843 was set into a draft treaty, ado... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
These campaigns have received little scholarly attention, despite the abun- dance of academic interest on the history of human rights and the impressive array of work on feminist internationalism.3 Although the influence of women in the United Nations, and more widely across international institutions, has been widely ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
By comparison, the inter- vening period has been less thoroughly surveyed.4 In her superb examination of UN attention to corporeal abuses of African women, primarily in the 1950s, Giusi Russo has demonstrated the importance of the 1950s and 1960s in appreci- ating the configuration of rights, women, and colonialism.5 Y... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Resolution 843 is barely cited at all, beyond its gazetting in UN periodicals, and the Convention on Consent to Marriage is mostly consigned to passing reference.6 Given the salience of this earlier effort on “traditional abuses” to many of the priorities which emerged as definitive DOI: 10.4324/9781003036708-5 72 Rola... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
It argues that the animat- ing impulse was a profoundly hopeful vision of universality, advanced by a small but effective cohort of women, many from the newly independent states.
The Marriage Convention, its precursors, and their associated sentiments rep- resented an effort to translate the grand abstractions of 1948... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Their campaign was not conceived of as any kind of special status renovation to universality—but a pragmatic endeavour to translate global norms to rural nup- tials, and to extend the bold, abstract statement of human equality to some kind of daily symmetry in interpersonal and intimate relationships.
While focussed o... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
It was instead a reflexive attempt to advance the enjoyment of human rights worldwide, to make universality a real, experientially meaningful, truth.
Unlike many other forums of the UN, the human rights and humanitarian arena was a place where women found sustained presence, and substantial influence. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
In part, this was a configuration that stemmed from highly gendered assumptions about the nature of rights, welfare, and humanitarian questions, all which had been established as the acceptable political space for women well before 1945.
Across the Commonwealth, and the United States, arguments in the terms of stra- t... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Early suffragists had claimed authority in democratic politics that rested, in part, on an essentialized facility for caring.8 Transnational organization between women had a still more established lineage.9 Human rights and humanitarianism were, therefore, a sphere where there was some prospect for seizing opportunitie... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The bespoke forum for women’s rights, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which shared personnel, and agenda items, with the larger human rights apparatus, was well-regarded for its commitment. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
John Hum- phrey, Director of the Human Rights Division, flatly declared in his memoir that “there was no more independent body in the United Nations.”11 The women of the General Assembly, often working across the CSW, the Commission on Human Rights, and the Committee on Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian Affairs, were ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Amongst the earliest of the UN’s travelling advisory seminars on human rights, held across the late 1950s and early 1960s, were devoted to the pragmatic questions of women’s freedoms Universal human rights for women 73 and welfare. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
They convened well outside the conventional circuit of international organization, assembling, for example, in Bangkok, Bogotá Addis Ababa, and Lomé.12 Although on balance a mixture of liberal feminists, with the Western countries represented by a range of Christian and Social Democratic, Labor, and various reformist C... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
As Kirsten Ghodsee has shown in her excellent analyses, their perspective was distinct, drawn from state-managed women’s organizations and the academy.13 As with the majority of Soviet representation, they typi- cally avoided concession on their own national deficiencies. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Nevertheless, the alignment between Soviet international positioning as a champion of women’s advancement, and their own experiences, did tend to place the Soviet bloc in a less obstructionist mode in women’s human rights questions, especially when the rights involved demanded a strong, activist role for the state.
Th... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Zoya V. Mironova (USSR), a proponent of women’s rights initiatives at the UN in the early 1960s, had been a champion ice skater—and went on to become a pioneering surgeon in some of the most intricate reconstruc- tive procedures in elite Soviet athletes.
Zofia Dembinksa (Poland) had worked for childhood education and ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
They were far from liberal reformers, but they provided another reliable constituency for some measures to improve women’s status, unlike the general case obstructionism and diversion that characterized so much of Soviet activity on other human rights questions. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Beyond the opportunities seized by women from the political West and the Soviet bloc, the small but growing set of Asian, Arab, and African women played a prominent role in leading debate.14 This was a cohort which generally had strong nationalist credentials, and had fought against colonialism, traditional social patt... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Over the reserva- tions of Eleanor Roosevelt, who initially viewed the measure as redundant, they ensured the new human rights of the post-war era spoke of “all,” rather than “all 74 Roland Burke men.”20 This early cohort of women also ensured there was an expressly stated affirmation of equal rights in marriage.21 In ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Prior to independence, Sivomey had been engaged in Togolese social work for women and girls, and work in the civil service. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
As co-founder of Togo’s first feminist organization, the Union of Togolese Women (UFEMTO), she would bring her experience to New York, before being elected Mayor of Lomé in 1972.22 Alongside her counterpart Jeanne Martin Cissé, a senior party official from the radically anti-imperialist Guinea, serving the former trade... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Their perspective was less juridical and infused a practicality to often ethereal and evasive claims from Western pow- ers on “levels of civilization” and the apparent infeasibility of advancing social and attitudinal change through international action. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
In their proximity to the com- munity, the local, this Third World cohort were somewhat closer to the balance of interests that would become more characteristic of the 1970s and early 1980s, across the various International Women’s Year Conferences, and their NGO Trib- unes, in Mexico City,24 Copenhagen, and Nairobi.25... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Arguments which coun- tries would not openly countenance on, for instance, signature abuses of state power, such as extrajudicial killing and torture, were strategically advanced by emphasizing those rights which entailed wider social and attitudinal reform, fore- most marriage practices.
The intricacy, for instance, ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Supposed deference to local customs was a superficially plausible, and somewhat respectable, defen- sive claim against universal application of various draft human rights measures.
These claims were encapsulated in a proposed colonial application clause, which allowed metropolitan power to exempt their colonies from t... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Insistence on the inclusion of a colonial application clause in the draft human rights covenant was amongst the highest priorities for the European powers, bolstered by Aus- tralia, Canada, and the US, who had their own federal state provisions which they sought to inscribe on the various texts.26 Across 1949 and into ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Cassin, combining roles of defensive advocate for imperial France, and a sincerely engaged jurist on human rights, was the most eloquent example.
In commending the colonial clause on the draft covenant in June 1949, he warned that while there was a seductive logic to universal application to colonies, it risked “a gen... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
“It was certain,” he argued, “that the principle of the equality of the sexes could not be applied immediately in all such territories in so far as family law was con- cerned.”29 Cassin claimed that “it was not possible to impose upon them progres- sive steps” for women, given these were “not understood by the people o... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Nevertheless, there were easy assertions that decades under imperial custodi- anship were the path to enlightenment.
This colonial rationale against universal- ity might have been credible—were it not for the presence of actual women from the regions that were being so comfortably and confidently essentialized.
When ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
In a sharp riposte, Afnan stated her disappoint- ment that Cassin “had used the backwardness of the peoples of equatorial Africa as an argument for the inclusion of the colonial clause in the covenant.”31 She explained, “differences of culture and tradition” should not foreclose “universal application.”32 Despite repea... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
While the inclusion of a colonial clause in the covenant was defeated, the instru- mental deployment of custom would continue across the 1950s, commencing with the December 1952 Convention on the Political Rights of Women (CPW).33 Striking for its clear, parsimonious statement of electoral equality, the CPW was amongst... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
It presented no nor- mative novelty, and no extension of the precepts set down in the UDHR, instead serving as an international legal sequel to the suffrage won nationally in much of the world since the 1890s.
With the second tranche of suffrage triumphs in the 1940s, the equal right for women to elect and to be elect... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Amongst the few independent Asian and African states, universal suffrage was embraced as part of the national eman- cipation project.
Nevertheless, women from outside the political West were again the terrain for testing what, precisely, was meant by universality. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Against a coali- tion that included major Western powers, who cited apparently insuperable atti- tudes in their colonies, and the men representing Syria, Egypt, and Iran, it was the women from Pakistan and Iraq who insisted that suffrage was essential. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Begum Rana Liaquat Ali Khan, who had faced such tests at home, spoke persuasively of the support for equality lent by the late Mohammed Ali Jinnah, father of Pakistani independence.34 Iraq’s Afnan spoke of the nationalist modernization effort under- way across Asia, Africa, and her own Arab region, and the affirmation ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
When kept within the austere frame of formal political institutions, translating philosophical vision to legal verité for women was contentious, but not catastrophically so.
However, when the UN began to engage in social and customary restrictions of women’s human rights, the difficulties were markedly greater.
In la... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Led by the imperial powers, and amplified by some of the Third World states, the initiative, which sought action on “customs, ancient laws and practices,” was the arena for a wide-ranging contest on how real the UDHR should be for women.36 Its origins were in an initiative which had emerged from the CSW, across March a... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Aziza Hussein, the first woman representative from Egypt, contested essentialized ideas on tra- dition and religious custom.
In her debut intervention on 15 December 1954, Hussein related a catalogue of errors in Western presumptions about Islam, and the confusion between religion and an abuse that resided in social p... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
She pointed to the first feminist success for Egyptian women at the turn of the century, and a national project to “recapture the original liberal spirit of Islam” as part of “the gradual intellectual and social regeneration of Egyptian society.” Hussein described recent developments across education, welfare, and wome... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Artati Marzuki, a future Indonesian minister for education under Sukarno, pre- pared a similarly complex account, with particular attention to the ways in which Dutch colonialism had sought to codify what had been a dynamic and evolving customary law.
Her account was not triumphalist.
There were obvious injustices in... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Marzuki gestured to the momentum that was emerg- ing in the Indonesian Republic, citing a long dormant effort to reform marriage law had recently “been unanimously accepted by the women’s organizations.”40 Carmela Aguilar, the legendary Peruvian feminist, and the first woman to accede to Ambassadorial rank in her count... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Fluent in Quechua, she embraced both her Incan heritage and a blunt human rights universalism.41 With a career devoted to advancing equality through multiple domains—national, the regional system of the Inter-American Commission, and the international forums of the UN—Aguilar promptly dis- pensed with the excuses, and ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
“Women,” she declared, “should not be deprived of fundamental rights merely because of prejudice and tradition.”42 Accordingly, while “sociologists often said that Universal human rights for women 77 customary law was very difficult to change,” and others had prophesized “that the fabric of society would disintegrate i... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
“Awaiting release from the yoke imposed on them by custom:” Navigating custom in the convention on marriage Over the course of the 1950s, the CSW and various other arms of the UN wan- dered into marriage and family, and the perilous question of how rapidly, and by what mechanism, the architecture of human rights could ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Exhortatory enterprises, such as the 1954 resolution, allowed a degree of evasion on how far and how fast social and attitudinal change could be achieved.
A binding treaty would demand specificity, a difference which had already left the UDHR’s sequel, the human rights covenant, foundering.
Yet pro- posals for a Conv... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Positioned in between the new post-war concept of universal human rights, and older traditions of protectionist humani- tarianism, the marriage convention had antecedents in the 1950 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prosti- tution of Others, and more directly, in t... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The essence of the task was encapsulated in the CSW’s summative report, which observed the core problem—attitudinal and social sys- tems which defeated the experience of equality. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
“Even in countries where the law recognized equality of rights for women,” the CSW recorded, “traditions and customs based on the idea that the husband was the head of the family were still deep-rooted, with the result that in practice women did not exercise the rights accorded them by the law.”48 Equality and agency i... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Supporters of an ambitious rights effort, “felt that only the adoption of an international instrument such as a convention was likely to set up a genuine current of public opinion.”49 Only international law might “stimulate Governments to take steps to bring their national legislation into harmony with the principles e... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Both Gladys Tillett, the US representative, and Poland’s Zofia Dembinksa, a surrogate for the wider Soviet bloc, endorsed Sivomey’s position.
Nigeria’s Jaiyeola Aduke Moore, who had worked for women’s advancement at home, and practiced as a barrister, expressed her support for the Convention.53 While aided by bipar- t... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Both spoke for states which were still in the optimistic early moments of independence. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Both women urged the Convention’s adoption in powerful, personalistic terms—an advocacy that stemmed from the immedi- acy and proximity of child marriage and bride price, which their new states were committed to eradicate.54 Where Soviet and Western delegates pondered candidly ideological sub-amendments and juridical n... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Her posi- tioning in the discussion went well beyond Togolese delegate, and instead a kind of collective proxy for the young women across the African region. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
As General Assembly deliberations opened on 4 October 1961, Sivomey “thanked the Committee for having agreed to give priority to the draft Conven- tion on marriage, on behalf of the millions of African women who were awaiting release from the yoke imposed on them by custom.”55 Cissé spoke poignantly on what “custom” co... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
She openly pro- fessed her faith that international resolve on marriage “would help to improve the lot of African women who still, only too often, were regarded as a chattel which the parents could dispose of without the girl concerned having to give her consent.”56 In a hopeful vision of what a formal treaty could del... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
“African girls,” she proclaimed, would be armed with a new confidence.
Inspirited by the knowledge “they were protected by an international instrument,” those far distant from New York and Geneva “would not hesitate to refuse their consent to anyone who attempted to exert pressure on them.”57 Across the first afternoo... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The contest between anti-colonial Third World and the Western delegations was comparatively subdued, a tranquillity that had become rare by the early 1960s.
Soviet bloc representatives took the opportunity to boast of their progressive ide- ological credentials on women’s rights.
Israel’s Shulamit Nardi, building on ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Nardi emphasized her experience within developing a protective family law across customs. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Nardi, a Labor Zionist and academic, argued that the Convention “ought not to present insuperable difficul- ties.”58 With large inflows of co-religionists into her new country, many “from regions where the very customs and practices which the Convention was intended to abolish prevailed,” Israel had found protections f... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The promise, however, was punctured in the final substantive intervention of the afternoon meeting—from Nigeria’s most senior representative, Prince Jaja Wachuku, who rescinded the support originally extended by Jaiyeola Aduke Moore.
Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Wachuku was emerging as a major figure in the Ni... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
After a decade of advancing the cause of independence, Wachuku had been appointed as Foreign Minister by Nigeria’s anti-colonial icon, Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Wachuku, whose own background comprised a distinguished Igbo royal descent line, the Student Chris- tian movement in Britain, and a childhood playing the stereotypical ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
He authored his own authorita- tive variant of African interests, one sharply at odds with the principles advanced by Sivomey and Cissé. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Wachuku chided the proponents of consent to marriage, and stated “that the Western conception of marriage was not the only valid one,” with the implied pejoration that Sivomey and Cissé were insufficiently authentic as African representatives.60 Despite spending his formative years abroad, and recent years ensconced in... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Paying no deference to the arguments of his Togolese and Guinean colleagues, he flatly stated that “whereas in the West the consent of the two intending spouses only was required, that was not the case in Africa.”61 He defended bride price, and extolled polyg- amy, stating what he perceived was a self-evident virtue, i... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Even as he professed his support for the two human rights covenants, he was almost contemptuous of the draft Convention on marriage, which he dismissed as “completely pointless.”63 A universalist when it came to fighting for Nigerian independence, when it came to local social and cultural institutions, he recited the s... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
As the meeting drew it to its close, Sivomey and Cissé were deeply disap- pointed to encounter precisely the attitudes they were fighting at home were so readily transported to the General Assembly.
Cissé responded that she was “very concerned” to encounter such claims. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
“To hear the statement of the Nigerian rep- resentative” was a real source of dismay, “since the women of Africa looked for encouragement in their efforts to improve the status of women.”65 She sidestepped the canard on polygamy, which was not expressly prohibited in the draft text, but 80 Roland Burke added perfectly ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Cissé opined “it was easy for a rich man who could afford ten wives to sing the praises of that system,” and reiterated that their endeavours were designed “solely towards guaranteeing for women, and for African women in particular, a decent and happy existence.”66 Sivomey sought the intervention of another legation, “... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The Nigerian effort to terminate consideration of the Convention before it began failed, but the contest which followed did tend to reveal the extent of unease over the balance between the diversity of customs and circumstances, and draft text’s effort to apply the plain meaning of the UDHR’s articles to marriage.
Wha... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Consent was the most profound question of the Convention process—in its most elemental sense, this entailed a serious reflection on what freedom and agency actually meant.
Badia Afnan made the insightful observation that there were potentially seri- ous structural defects which limited the meaning of consent in some c... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Though she had no immediate remedy at hand, Afnan’s diagnosis of the problem of “consent without choice” was depressingly acute.68 In the absence of wider social and economic opportunities, or any real protections from the state, the space for exercising a choice in a meaningful way was seriously constrained.
Marriage... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The Marriage Conven- tion could mandate consent with admirable clarity, but it inevitably left this mas- sive wider context, which spoke to the structural lack of choice and freedoms, unresolved. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
A definitive minimum age was perhaps the most severe test for the equilibrium between a maximalist universality, and one which held some nuance.69 There was fairly sparing support for a binding specific age—which seemed too prescriptive, and not necessarily an absolute requirement for achieving the fundamental pur- pos... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Most cited their own minima, often with evident pride; but conceded that there might be local conditions and circumstances in which other ages were reasonable.
The eventual compromise was no mandated universal minimum—merely that a state determine and implement one.
It was a concession to what seemed an impossible ca... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Although not successful in the final Convention, there was almost immediately a supplemental campaign, which introduced the kind of hybrid human rights treaty that would become a mainstay for future UN projects.
A proposed Recommenda- tion, which was a kind of annexe to Convention, operated to enhance the original tex... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The concept of a graded kind of state obligation, from modest to substantial, was a valuable mechanism for charting a line between pessimism and utopianism. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
As Universal human rights for women 81 a strategy, the Recommendation furnished an approach which rapidly became a default solution to seemingly intractable differences in commitment and outlook; enacted in the Optional Article to the 1965 International Convention Against All- Forms of Racial Discrimination, and first ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Although advanced most vigorously by African women, the addressed by the Marriage Convention was universal, even if manifestations differed. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Daw Mya Sein, who led Burma’s Women’s Council, observed during the debate that dis- criminatory patterns were “a phenomenon unconnected with the level of civili- zation.”71 Privately, Australia, where suffragists had won the franchise early, and a substantial women’s activism had emerged on peace, education, and welfar... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The cen- tre-right government of Robert Menzies and Attorney General Garfield Barwick were generally sympathetic, but blanched when they assessed its single colony, Papua New Guinea, which remained a decade from independence.
Despite pres- sure from Australian women, and the opposition Labor party, the Convention was ... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Given that Australia had recently adopted structural reforms of its marriage and family law, and had once prided itself on progressive social legislation, it was a less than encourag- ing position. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The abuses in the fabric of the “domestic” were still perceived as “overseas” problems—though as the 1974 Royal Commission on Human Rela- tionships would reveal, violations in the “private” realm were also part of the “traditions” of Port Melbourne and Port Macquarie, and not a distant “custom” issue in Port Moresby.72... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Conclusions: Traditional abuses or abuses of tradition?
From the foundational years of the world organization, women working in the UN presented the challenge of universality of human rights in a different key, informed by experiential knowledge.
Translation of the UDHR required national legislation, international co... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
Yet it also necessitated attention to the least gov- ernmental, and most intimate; of the human-scale power relations, not merely the grand structures of constitutions, courts, and treasuries. | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
The fledgling efforts on “custom” and “ancient law,” specifically marriage, prefigured the sorts of argu- ments which became central, first to the 1967 Declaration on the Elimination of All-forms of Discrimination Against Women, and later to the drafting, and imple- mentation, and monitoring of both CEDAW and the CRC.7... | INTL LAW | https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/9781003036708_webpdf.pdf | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003036708/women-un-dan-plesch-rebecca-adami |
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