The Ghanaian lawyer, activist, and choose who anchored ladies’s rights in worldwide human rights regulation
The Conference on the Elimination of All Types of Discrimination in opposition to Ladies (CEDAW), which goals to eradicate all types of discrimination primarily based on intercourse and gender, is an indispensable treaty for ladies and women worldwide. Given its profound impression, at this time’s sphere of worldwide human rights regulation would look vastly completely different. However few individuals know that the CEDAW treaty was preceded by a 1967 draft by Annie Ruth Jiagge.
In an effort to strengthen ladies’s rights, the United Nations Common Meeting (UNGA) entrusted the United Nations Fee on the Standing of Ladies (UNCSW) with drawing up a doc on the elimination of discrimination in opposition to ladies. When the assembly was coming to an finish after two weeks, the chosen committee had not but been capable of produce a single draft. Subsequently, Jiagge (elected rapporteur of the Fee in 1966) took issues into her personal arms. After consulting with different crew members, she drew up a draft in a single day which was despatched to UN member states for remark and adopted because the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination in opposition to Ladies (DEDAW) by the UNGA on 7 November 1967.1)
Nonetheless, reporting procedures had been voluntary and authorities response was minimal, main the UN Common Meeting to undertake the legally binding CEDAW Conference in 1979.2)Jiagge’s preliminary draft and the insights gained from DEDAW had been important stepping stones within the growth of the CEDAW treaty.
From the classroom to the courtroom
Annie Ruth Jiagge (née Baëta) was born on 7 October 1918 in Lomé, a territory previously a part of French Togoland – certainly one of many African colonies below European governance throughout that interval – and now a part of the Togolese Republic.3) At a younger age, Jiagge’s mother and father despatched her to stay along with her grandmother in Keta on the Gold Coast in order that she may obtain an English training.4)After junior secondary faculty, Jiagge studied educating at Achimota School from 1933 to 1937. The next 12 months, she started her first educating place on the Presbyterian Women Faculty in Keta the place she shortly rose to the place of headmistress (1940-1946).5)
Nonetheless, educating “left her stressed”. Throughout her research at Achimota School, Jiagge went on a tour of the Regulation Courtsin Accra, which will need to have left an enduring impression as she subsequently selected to pursue authorized research. As a result of unavailability of regulation programs on the Gold Coast, her older brother took the initiative to inquire on her behalf on the College of London. After efficiently passing the London Matriculation Examination, Jiagge was granted admission to the London Faculty of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Lincoln’s Inn.6)
A lot of Jiagge’s male colleagues thought she was inclined to fail her research.7)) They believed ladies weren’t suited to regulation and steered that she ought to examine dressmaking in Paris as an alternative. On the time, educating was thought of a good occupation for ladies.8) Regulation, nonetheless, was nonetheless a male-dominated discipline.9) Regardless of the discouragement, Jiagge travelled to London and pursued her research at LSE, the place she was certainly one of solely 4 feminine college students and the one African enrolled in her class.10) However she “refus[ed] to be intimidated” as she was “educated to worth her intelligence” by her mother and father and had the assist of her household, i.e. financially.11) In 1949, she obtained her L.L.B., making her one of many first feminine legal professionals from Ghana.
She then returned to the Gold Coast to work as a barrister.12)Following her marriage to Fred KA Jiagge in 1953, Annie Ruth Jiagge felt pressured to mix knowledgeable profession with home tasks. In consequence, she gave up the bar to develop into a Justice of the Peace choose, being the primary lady in Ghana to carry this place. In 1959, the identical 12 months that Jiagge and her husband adopted a baby, she was promoted to the circuit courtroom. Simply two years later, she made historical past as the primary lady in Ghana and one of many first within the Commonwealth of Nations to be appointed to the place of Excessive Court docket choose, the place she served till 1969.13) She then grew to become the primary feminine choose of the Court docket of Enchantment, the best courtroom in Ghana at the moment, and was the courtroom’s president from 1980 to 1983.14) In 1974, Justice Jiagge was awarded a J.D. by the College of Ghana.15)
“A quiet heroine, a lady who understood the ache of ladies.” 16)
Till her demise on 12 June 1996 in Accra, Jiagge diligently fought for gender equality. Her advocacy contributed to the popularity and codification of ladies’s rights as worldwide human rights.17) Nonetheless, this combat was not certainly one of clean crusing. Jiagge was selling ladies’s rights in Ghana earlier than the federal government had even acknowledged the ever present discrimination in opposition to ladies to be of political relevance.18) Over time, she recognized a number of essential elements contributing to the development of gender equality.
In accordance with her, it is very important establish discriminatory laws and exchange it with legal guidelines safeguarding ladies’s rights.19) She was influential on this endeavour not solely on the worldwide stage but additionally on the nationwide stage. As a member of the constituent meeting in 1991, she pressed for the authorized regulation of the age of marriage, consent to marriage, upkeep and custody of youngsters, and inheritance and divorce, making certain that the structure of Ghana’s Third Republic included legal guidelines defending ladies.20)
However Jiagge acknowledged that the modification of laws wouldn’t suffice because it “alone can not handle deep-rooted prejudices and structural obstacles.” Additional, she insisted: “It’s as much as ladies to liberate themselves. Though outdoors assist is helpful, there are few examples of oppressed individuals being freed by others. The actual liberation battle takes place within the camp of the oppressed and there are fairly a couple of male allies anxious to assist.” To attain this state of emancipation, Annie Ruth Jiagge thought of training to be key. She believed that ladies would purchase “political maturity” by way of training and in flip really feel empowered to combat for his or her rights and declare their seat on the desk. Nonetheless, she felt a sure “inertia” from ladies.21) She faults the “conventional perception that ladies have solely restricted potentialities in restricted spheres”,22)which has “[…] conditioned [them] into considering that there’s just one lifestyle for them, just one technique of fulfilment – in motherhood and homemaker.”23) She thought, “[…] ladies on the entire have accepted such discrimination as privilege. Ladies have additionally accepted discrimination as justifiable on non secular grounds.”24)
This comment could appear paradoxical, contemplating religion performed a central position in Jiagge’s life. She was launched to Christianity at an early age since her father was a Presbyterian Church minister.25) Furthermore, her grandmother lived in the home of German missionary sisters26) who instilled robust Christian rules in Annie. All through her life, she was actively concerned in varied church organizations, e.g. volunteering with the British Younger Ladies’s Christian Affiliation (YWCA) throughout her time in London. Upon her return, she performed a pivotal position within the institution of the YWCA within the Gold Coast the place she acted because the group’s president from 1955 to 1960. Jiagge additionally served the World Council of Church buildings i.a. within the combat in opposition to Apartheid in South Africa.27) She was the primary African lady to be named president of the WCC in 1975.
Photograph Credit score: Peter Williams/ WCC
Caption: Anne Justice Jiagge, Pre-Meeting Ladies’s occasion (PAWM) of the World Council of Church buildings, Canberra, Australia, 2-6 February 1991; Supply: WCC archives, A05042-13
Regardless of her devotion to Christianity, Jiagge was capable of differentiate between Christian values and the systemic oppression of 1 gender below the guise of non secular perception. Each her mom and grandmother taught her to assume for herself. Moreover, her alma mater, Achimota School, was progressive for a Christian establishment on the time; it aimed to create equal alternatives for girls and boys and was the primary co-educational faculty established on the Gold Coast. By means of her work with the YWCA Jiagge encountered many individuals in want whose tales deeply affected her and “made her rethink her personal religion”. One writer due to this fact means that “[…] her perception in and advocacy for social reforms had been […] the consequence of her deep Christian religion and dedication […].”28)
Alongside training, empowering ladies hinges on the accessibility of economic support. This problem grew to become poignantly clear to Jiagge when she led the Ghanaian delegation on the first World Convention on Ladies in 1975.29) Earlier than the convention, she consulted with quite a lot of ladies from throughout Ghana, the main takeaway being the dearth of (micro)credit score prolonged to ladies. This problem resonated with ladies on the convention and led to the emergence of the “Stitching to Promote Ladies’s World Banking” initiative. Jiagge served on the board of administrators of Ladies’s World Banking (WWB) in Ghana.
Intersectional Feminism
Annie Ruth Jiagge didn’t simply combat in opposition to the oppression of ladies but additionally in opposition to the oppression of “the growing world”. Each cumulated in her intersectional strategy to feminism. She emphasised that ladies from Africa face varied types of discrimination which are intertwined, particularly “gendered inequalities, conventional beliefs and practices, imperialism, neo-colonialism, and under-development. 30)Jiagge grew up in “one of the vital patriarchal and marginalized areas of Ghana”.31) Thus, she knew that successfully strengthening ladies’s rights requires an strategy that takes all these elements into consideration and the way they exacerbate one another. On the first World Convention on Ladies, she encountered ladies who lacked understanding for the significance of an intersectional strategy to feminism, “they thought ladies from the third world had been too occupied with growth points”.32) To Jiagge, this was incomprehensible; “How can anybody who belongs to and advantages from her nation’s system of financial strangulation ever complain of any discrimination in opposition to herself with out on the identical time searching for to lighten the burden of these oppressed by her personal nation?”.33) In her name for solidarity, she emphasizes that ladies from the “growing world” must be main the cost within the combat for gender equality of their international locations as they possess the required perception.34) Additional, she believed that the emancipation of African ladies would gas the continent’s emancipation.35) Her name for the liberation of African states mirrored the calls for of the then-emerging anti-neo-colonialist36)motion.
Legacy
Justice Annie Ruth Jiagge was a warrior for ladies’s rights and feminine empowerment. She understood the social justice problems with “the growing world” and fought for his or her worldwide visibility with formidable dedication. She was perceived as decided, ingenious, accountable, and empathic.37)
Her distinctive management qualities had been valued each nationally and internationally. After the Nkrumah regime was overthrown in 1966 due to rising dissatisfaction and corruption issues, Jiagge was requested to chair a fee investigating the belongings amassed by senior public servants and political leaders.38) Jiagge was a consultant of Ghana on the UNCSW from 1962 to 1972 and after her draft in 1967, she was requested to chair the twenty first session of the UNCSW. She performed an influential position within the founding of the Nationwide Council on Ladies and Growth (NCWD) in Ghana, in response to UNGA decision 3275 recommending member states to “set up […] acceptable nationwide equipment to speed up the combination of ladies in growth and to eradicate discrimination on grounds of intercourse”, and served because the NCWD’s president from 1975 to 1983. She led the Ghanaian delegation on the Worldwide Ladies’s Convention not solely in 1975 however once more in 1980 and helped to plan the 4th World Convention on Ladies in 1993 after UN Secretary-Common Boutros-Ghali personally requested her as a member of his advisory group.39)
Nonetheless, her robust sense of justice is what stood out probably the most. “Annie Baeta Jiagge anticipate[ed] numerous herself … and numerous humanity, through which she ha[d] nice religion.”40)
“Injustice eats me internally. I get very stressed after I are available contact with it.”
Additional Readings:
Atobrah, Deborah/ Awedoba, Albert Ok. (2019): “A Path-Blazer, An Excellent Worldwide Jurist, A Humanitarian, An Ecumenical Christian And Extra…The Lifetime of Justice Annie Jiagge (Née Baëta)” in Mercy Akrofi Ansah & Esi Sutherland (Eds.) “Constructing the Nation: Seven Notable Ghanaian”, Digibooks Ghana.
Chesler, Ellen (2022): “Who wrote CEDAW?”. in Rebecca Adami & Dan Plesch (Eds.) “Ladies and the UN – A brand new historical past of ladies’s worldwide human rights”, Routledge Explorations in Growth Research.
Jiagge, Annie Ruth (1969): “The position of non-governmental organizations within the training of ladies in African states”, Convergence, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 73-78.
Jiagge, Annie Ruth (1984): “The cry of the poor”, Worldwide Evaluation of Mission, vol. 73, no. 290, pp. 173-184.
