WUNRN
New UN High Commissioner Has History
of Advocacy for Women's Rights.
______________________________________________________________________
1 September 2008
GENEVA --
Navi Pillay officially began her four-year term as the top UN human rights
official on Monday. Ms. Pillay, who was appointed UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights in July by the UN General Assembly, on the recommendation of the
Secretary-General, became the fifth High Commissioner for Human Rights since
the office was created in 1993. She takes over a growing organization that now
has 1,000 staff working in 50 countries with a total annual budget of some US$
150 million.
Ms. Pillay
has spent the past five years as a judge on the International Criminal Court
(ICC) in the Hague, the first permanent independent court set up to try cases
of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Before being appointed to
the ICC, she served eight years with the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda (ICTR), including four years as its President. During her tenure, the
court made several ground-breaking rulings that have shaped international
criminal law.
During her
first term, a Rwandan mayor, Jean-Paul Akayesu, was found guilty of inciting
the murder, rape and torture of thousands of Tutsis. In a far-reaching
judgement that built on the tragic realities that had emerged during the wars
in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, the ICTR also ruled for the first time
that rape was a crime against humanity, and amounted to genocide when it was
intended to destroy a particular group.
"Rape
had always been regarded as one of the spoils of war," Pillay was quoted
as saying after the verdict. "Now it is a war crime, no longer a
trophy."
Her career
as a campaigner for human rights began much earlier in her home country, South
Africa, where she first made a name for herself as a front-line, grassroots
lawyer who acted as a defense attorney for many anti-apartheid campaigners and
trades unionists. In 1967, she became the first woman to start a law practice
in Natal Province, South Africa, and from 1967-1995 worked as an Attorney and
Conveyancer. During this period she also worked as a lecturer at the University
of KwaZulu-Natal. In 1995, after the end of the apartheid system, she became
the first black woman to be appointed a judge on the South African High Court.
Ms. Pillay,
who was born in South Africa in 1941, has been very active in supporting
women's rights throughout her career, and was one of the co-founders of the
international NGO Equality Now, which campaigns for women's rights. She has
also been involved with a number of other organizations working on issues
relating to children, detainees, victims of torture, and of domestic violence
as well as a range of other economic, social and cultural rights.
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