Advancing Human Rights
Email this pageCelebrate Jane Addams Birthday - Support Women Peacemakers!
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Celebrate Jane Addams Birthday - Support Women Peacemakers!
This fall marks the 150th anniversary of Jane Addams' birth and the 10th anniversary of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325. To mark this historic occasion, WILPF is launching a special project designed to bolster women's active engagement in conflict resolution and prevention. The new Advancing Women as Peacemakers (AWP) Project will educate citizens on the history of women as peacemakers, stressing the interconnectedness of gender equality and peace, and the unique roles women can and have played in peace negotiations. This fall, AWP will sponsor a national speaking tour and workshops featuring women peacemakers from conflict areas around the world. WILPF branches and other groups are encouraged to join this initiative and host a workshop. For more information, please contact Tanya Burovtseva, AWP Project Coordinator, at (617) 266-0999 or email: tburovtseva@wilpf.org.
Five Days That Will Shake the World: WILPF Joins U.S. Social Forum
This June, WILPF members will join thousands of activists to make the slogan “Another World is Possible” come to life. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom is on the official program and our members Edith Bell and Odile Hugonot Haber are also involved in additional workshops.
This gigantic, grassroots forum will address the key issues WILPFers work on, so it is a good place to make connections, spread WILPF’s name, and have an impact. Members can register at the official U.S. Social Forum website or if you want to use WILPF’s official registration password, contact carol.disarm(at)gmail.com.
There is a space on the registration form to indicate your organizational affiliation; write in WILPF and it will help us coordinate getting together in Detroit.
You Get What You Pay For 2010
WILPF members attending the 54th meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women push to reallocate government dollars from military expenditures to basic human needs. A pamphlet produced as the result of our strategizing at the International Board meeting about how to unify WILPF's talking points is available: Click here to view or download the pamphlet as a pdf file.
A Human Rights Crisis for Women in Honduras
A Human Rights Crisis for Women in Honduras 
Editor’s note: This article quotes extensively from Lisa VeneKlasen, executive director of Just Associates which hosted the Honduran Feminists in Resistance when they came to the U.S. It was compiled by WILPF editor Theta Pavis.
Honduran women have mobilized in unprecedented numbers across the country since the coup in June against that country’s fast-growing pro-democracy movement. Their peaceful demonstrations demanding a return to constitutional order, have been met with brutal repression by the police and military working with the de facto government. Our aim is to place women’s human rights squarely on the agenda shaping U.S. policy toward Honduras.
AnnJanette Rosga Interviewed About GEAR, New UN Agency for Women
The WILPF Enews Editor Theta Pavis recently (September2009) had the opportunity to inteview AnnJanette Rosga, the Director of WILP's UN Office, about the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR), the newly created UN agency for women and about the role WILPF played in GEAR's creation.
Take the Profit out of Health Insurance
“Measures to prevent ill health and disease are as important as the availability of appropriate medical treatment and care. It is therefore essential to take a holistic approach to health, whereby both prevention and care are placed within the context of environmental policy...."
US WILPF Letter to US Senate Urging Immediate Ratification of CEDAW
Click here to view and download a pdf version of this letter.
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), U.S. Section, calls upon the U.S. Senate to immediately ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
This year marks the 31st anniversary of the CEDAW Convention, the historic international bill of rights for women’s human rights. As an international non-governmental organization with UN consultative status, WILPF was a vital part of the decades-long process culminating in the adoption of the CEDAW Convention. In 1974, WILPF formally instructed its sections in various countries to engage their governments in the crafting of an international human rights convention which would “bring together the various aspects of women’s rights to form international law,” because we understood that “only through the intensive participation of women can best possible development in each country . . . and world peace [be] achieved.”
The CEDAW Convention was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 18, 1979 and signed, on behalf of the United States, by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Yet, thirty-one years later, this powerful treaty has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. The US is the only country to sign but not ratify the Convention.
Open Letter to Secretary Hillary Clinton re Support of International Criminal Court
April 16, 2009
The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW Room 7226
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Madam Secretary:
We write to urge that the current review of United States policy on the International Criminal Court [ICC] be completed quickly, and that it lead to three results: US participation in the Court’s meetings to complete its formation; extensive and thorough US cooperation with and support to the Court in its prosecutions and trials; and action to declare emphatically that US relations with the Court are in an entirely new era. The historic ICC arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir makes these steps especially urgent. The United States is now in the odd and unsustainable position of strongly endorsing the most important action that the ICC has ever taken while evading any commitment to support or participate in it as an institution.
The Applicability of THE CHILD SOLDIER PROTOCOL in the United States
What is the Child Soldier Protocol?
The Child Soldier Protocol, formally known as the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child's Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (CRC OPAC), seeks to protect children (anyone under 18) from the harmful impact of exposure and participation in armed conflict. In January 2003, the Senate unanimously ratified the Child Soldier Protocol and the U.S. became legally bound by the protocol's international standards on children. See below for key provisions of the Protocol.
Why is it relevant?
The Child Soldier Protocol - according to the U.S. government's first report on its compliance with the Protocol - requires no implementing legislation, which means that by ratifying, the U.S. is now legally obligated to put all of its provisions into action.* Treaties, such as the Child Soldier Protocol, once ratified by Congress are "the supreme law of the land,"* and as the Protocol does not require further legislation to be in effect it currently binds all branches of government on the federal and state level.
WILPF Had a Presence at Camp Hope 2009 in Chicago
More than 200 years ago, the American revolutionary Thomas Paine epitomized the spirit of WILPF when he said: “The world is my country, all [hu]mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” With the inauguration of Barack Obama, the world truly is our country and there is much good work for all of us to do.
People from around the country went to Hyde Park, IL for Camp Hope (http://www.camphope2009.org/), a historic gathering of activists pushing for positive transformation.
WILPF Resolution on Ending the Israel/Palestine Conflict - Nov 2008
On this International Day of Solidarity with the Palestine People–29 November 2008–and in this 60th anniversary year of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom calls again on the United Nations and the entire international community to take the steps needed to end the occupation of the Arab Territories occupied by Israel since 1967 and to enable the Palestinians to exercise their right to self-determination.
UN Human Rights Treaties and the US government position
Six major UN Human Rights Treaties grew out of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Download our flyer in PDF format to understand the current status of each treaty and the US government's position.
The flyer was designed to be printed double-sided on a single sheet of paper and folded in half.
Truth in Military Recruitment - Going beyond “counter recruitment” strategies to End Abusive and Improper Military Recruitment
In 2004 – according to the latest available statistics from the Under Secretary of Defense – about 19,885 seventeen year old children joined the
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