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| An Interview with Marilou McPhedran: Feminist and Human Rights Lawyer |
 PRINTABLE VERSION |
I started to use the term “lived rights” in my writing because I think that we can be seduced and misled by talking in terms of women’s human rights as though we have them. We do have them, in law, but we can’t necessarily live them. I think that that is the common ground for…”feminists” – men and women committed to gender equality. I actually think that the term feminism itself, not only being tainted by anti-feminists, and misogynist media, but also by women’s rights activists themselves who for one reason or another, either feel uncomfortable with the term because they feel betrayed, or they reject the term because the people around them reject the term.
I’m not for imposing a label on anybody. But I think that the actual definition of feminism is a very honourable label, a very justice driven label. But at the same time whether its aboriginal women in Canada or women from the south who say ‘I’m not going to define myself as a feminist,’ then I say ‘Fine, let’s just stay focused on the common ground of achieving lived rights for women and girls.’
[McPhedran wrote an article (published in McGill International Review, Spring 2005) based on her experience in Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2004]
Q: Since our readers will not have the opportunity to read your article as I did, can you summarize what you learned from your experience in post-Taliban Afghanistan? I was moved by your thesis ‘there is no peace without justice.’
MM: That’s a quote from the amazing Dr. Sima Samar, the chair of the new Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. One of the best uses of military force is to support the building of civil society. They have to be there to build the peace, keep the peace and strengthen the peace, and only way to do that is to also support civil society leaders and the building of social justice mechanisms, and mechanisms of accountability. It’s ironic, but western style democracy that just gets plunked down through armed force has as much a chance of consolidating the power of, for example, an Afghan warlord, as an elected president like Karzai. Unless the guns and the soldiers are used to protect the civil society leaders and to allow them to shape and build a culture of peace in the context of their own situation and the context of their own country, than it’s not going to be a peace that will last, or a peace that will be just.
Q: Thank you for your candidness and your stories. Is there anything else you would like to add before we end?
MM:Thank you for listening! There is a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, do you know it? Let me find it (looks for quote). Ok here, it is. My mentor (just retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice) Claire L’Heureux-Dubé referred to Roosevelt describing human rights as “Beginning in the small places close to home, and unless they have meaning there, they do not have meaning anywhere.”
Recommended links:
www.shuhada.org
Shuhada Organization (the NGO started by Dr. Sima Samar)
www.womenwagingpeace.net
Guide to advocacy and action: “Inclusive Security, Sustainable Peace”
www.iwrp.org
International Women’s Rights Project (co-directed by Marilou), with a full online copy of the First CEDAW Impact Study and an annotated bibliography on CEDAW, kept up-to-date by law students at the University of Victoria.
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Comments
Great Read! Charity Fadun | Mar 12th, 2005
This is the best interview I've read in a long long time. Very well done. I learnt a lot.
Cheryl Gudz | Mar 16th, 2005
thanks for your comments - i appreciate the feedback. MM is a really fascinating person -- she has a very inspiring personnality!
Fantastic article! Jane Poata | Jul 14th, 2009
Thanks for your inspired choice to interview Marilou McPhedran. I would like to show my high school students your work as an example of what they could do in the research component of our next unit.
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