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Mission
The
Caucus is a network of individuals and groups committed to strengthening
advocacy on women's human rights and helping to develop greater capacity among
women in the use of International Criminal Court and other mechanisms that provide women avenues of and access to
different systems of justice.
Mandate
- to incorporate gender perspectives in the ongoing process of setting
up the International Criminal Court, and
other mechanisms through the involvement of women worldwide in the process
- to help enable these institutions and instruments to effectively
protect and promote gender justice
Objectives
- Work towards coming into existence of the International Criminal
Court (ICC) and ensure its responsiveness to the principles of gender
justice
- Participate in the ICC Ratification Campaign
- Monitor and assist the Court to fairly and effectively prosecute
cases of gender violence
- Promote awareness of the International Criminal Court
Origins
The Women's
Caucus grew out of the work of a last minute organizing effort of a small
group of women human rights activists at the February 1997 Preparatory
Committee for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court at the U.N.
These women realized that without an organized caucus, women's concerns would
not be appropriately defended and promoted.
Building
on the work of previous caucuses formed around the Vienna, Cairo and Beijing
Conferences, and due to the success of this ad hoc caucus in integrating a
gender perspective, in brackets, into the definition of crimes against
humanity and war crimes, these women decided to form a permanent caucus which
would be part of the CICC but autonomous in its function.
The
Goal of the Caucus:
The
Caucus tried to get women to become involved from every region of the globe
including the developed world. As the Caucus grew and became more structured,
three main goals were identified by the more than 300 organizations from
around the globe which supported its work. These were:
1) To ensure
a worldwide participation of women's human rights advocates in the
negotiations of the ICC treaty to lobby for an effective and independent court
2)
To take advantage of this opportunity to educate governments delegations and
mainstream Human Rights NGOs on their commitments to women and the need to
integrate a gender perspective into the U.N.
3)
To use this historical event as a means for popular education on women's human
rights and raise public awareness of the horrific nature of crimes committed
against women
Along
with our focus on women's concerns, the Caucus consistently made our views
known on issues which are generally not recognized as gendered, such as
jurisdiction, independence of the prosecutor, complementarity, cooperation,
financing, etc. Nevertheless, due to our limited human and financial resources
and because nobody else was doing it, we had to prioritize those issues which
were more directly of concern to women in our position papers, in our lobbying
efforts as well as in choosing our core principles.
As
a result, a broad range of crimes of sexual and gender violence are
encompassed in the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the
Rome Statute contains expansive mandates concerning the participation and
protection of victims and witnesses and the staffing of women on the court as
well as experts on sexual and gender violence.
Executive
Committee
ELEANOR
CONDA is a past co-director of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice and immediate
past director of the Asian Centre for Women’s Human Rights (ASCENT) based in
Manila
,
Philippines
. She has also served as a sub-regional
coordinator of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch-Asia Pacific
working around the convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. She has done extensive international and
national advocacy related to the Optional Protocol to CEDAW and the Beijing
Platform for Action.
RHONDA
COPELON is a professor of law and director of the International Women’s Human Rights
Law Clinic (IWHR) at CUNY School of Law in
New York City
. IWHR has functioned as the Legal Secretariat
to the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, which succeeded in writing broad
gender provisions into the Rome Treaty creating the permanent International
Criminal Court and now serves as Legal Advisor to the Caucus. Prior to joining
the founding faculty of
CUNY
Law
School
in 1983, she was for 12 years a staff
attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in
New York City
where she litigated a broad range of
women’s rights and civil rights cases. More recently, She has also
co-authored the legal text, Babcock et al., SEX DISCRIMINATION AND THE LAW:
HISTORY, PRACTICE AND THEORY.
LORENA
FRIES is a feminist lawyer with 18 years of experience in the women’s human rights
field. She has a wealth of training skills in human rights at the national and
international level. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the
Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, which was formed to mainstream gender in
the creation of the International Criminal Court, and has done international
and national consultancies for governmental, non-governmental and
international agencies on women’s human rights issues. She has authored
publications and articles on gender and the law, criminal law and women’s
human rights. She is immediate past Executive Director of La Morada, one of
the most well-known women’s NGO’s in
Latin America
.
BETTY
KAARI MURUNGI is a women’s human rights activist. Ms.
Murungi has been a lawyer in private practice in
Kenya
for 17 years. She
is member of the Law Society of Kenya, has served four years on the Board of
Directors of the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-KENYA) and since 1997 has
been a board member of the Women’s Caucus participating at the
Rome
conference. She has
served as Team leader for the CICC on the crime of aggression and since 1998,
Ms. Murungi has been a con
su
ltant and legal advisor to the
International
Center
for Human Rights and Democratic
Development (ICHRDD) on gender related crimes at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Currently
Ms. Murungi is the Director of the Africa Office Urgent Action Fund and Convener of the
Women's Caucus for
Gender Justice
.
VAHIDA NAINAR is a Board member and former Executive Director of the Women’s Caucus
for Gender Justice, which was formed in 1997 to ensure a gender perspective in
International Criminal Court. Based in
Bombay
, she has advocated extensively for women’s
rights in
India
. She was a field worker with Aawaaz-e-Niswan
(“Voice of Women”) in
Bombay
, where she organized women from minority
communities against gender oppression and coordinated advice and legal aid for
women. Subsequently, she founded and directed the Women’s Research and
Action Group in
Bombay
where she coordinated a nation-wide research
project on how social norms and legal rules affect women. Ms. Nainar also
worked as the Indian liaison for the International Solidarity Network of Women
Living Under Muslim Laws where, among other activities, she campaigned
internationally for support and solidarity in cases of individual women. She
is also a board member of the Urgent Action Fund.
VIVIAN STROMBERG is the Executive Director and
a founding board member of MADRE, an international women's human rights
organization that works in partnership with women's community-based groups
worldwide to address issues of health, economic development and other human
rights. She has been a member of the Executive Committee since 1997.
Staff
PAM
SPEES
Program Director
REENA GEEVARGHESE
Program Coordinator
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