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Felice Gaer
Remembering Beijing: The Ferraro Factor
(This post originally appeared on InlLawGrrls, a blog collecting articles and stories concerning international law, policy, practice. The original article can be found here)
Geraldine A. Ferraro, who passed away this weekend, is a symbol of women’s rights advocacy. As America’s first female candidate of a major party for vice-president, she broke barriers. But readers of IntLawGrrls may not know how actively and directly she influenced women’s rights issues in the international legal context as well.
Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration
Appalled by televised reports about the use of rape as a weapon of war by Serbs in the Bosnian conflict, Gerry contacted Madeleine Albright to ask what the new Clinton Administration was doing about it. She was immediately asked to join the Administration’s first delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, in February 1993, where she helped convince Member States to adopt a separate resolution addressing rape in war.