The Honorable Mary Robinson

"Women and International Policy"

Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008
4:30 p.m.
Mershon Auditorium
1871 High St.

Sponsored by the John Glenn School of Public Affairs and the 65th Anniversary of the International Studies Program.

See a streaming video of this event in two parts, view Part I and Part II. This streaming video requires RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free.

To sign up for this event, please e-mail oct9@jgippm.ohio-state.edu or call (614) 688-3206 by Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008.

Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland and formerly the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has spent most of her life as a human rights advocate.  She now chairs the Council of Women World Leaders and is President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. 

Robinson has been named a "Hero and Icon" as one of Time magazine’s 2005 Top 100 men and women whose "power, talent or moral example is transforming the world." In 2006, Robinson received Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences for her work as a global human rights campaigner, singled out for her "moral strength," her defense of "ethics in the field of politics and academic research," and her "tireless efforts to bring about a world without borders."

Broadening her international scope, Robinson expands her leadership into other areas including business enterprise, corporate citizenship, and the reform of some of the word's most prestigious organizations. She serves as Vice President of Club of Madrid, working to promote democracy worldwide.  In business, she is one of five board members of the MasterCard Foundation, a newly established independent foundation focusing on microfinance, youth entrepreneurship and education.

Robinson was appointed to the U.N. Global Compact Board, a group of 20 global business, labor and social leaders working to advance ten universal business principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption for this large voluntary corporate citizenship initiative.

Based in New York, her work with Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative is supported by a partnership with the Aspen Institute, Columbia University (where she is a professor of practice), and the Swiss based International Council on Human Rights Policy.  Its goal is to bring the norms and standards of human rights into the globalization process and to support capacity building in good governance in developing countries.

The recipient of numerous honors and awards throughout the world, Robinson is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the American Philosophical Society and is Honorary President of Oxfam International.  She also serves on many boards including the Vaccine Fund, the Global Commission on Migration, the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, and the International Commission of Jurists.

Educated at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), King's Inns Dublin, and Harvard Law School (to which she won a fellowship in 1967), Robinson holds honorary doctorates from more than 40 universities around the world, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, London and Edinburgh.  She now serves as Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, as well as a Council of Goodwill Ambassador.

As an academic, legislator and barrister, she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change, arguing landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights as well as in the Irish courts and the European Court in Luxembourg.  In 1988, Robinson and her husband, Nicholas Robinson, founded the Irish Centre for European Law at the University of Dublin; since then, she has been Chancellor of the University.

The Honorable
Mary Robinson
Former President of Ireland
Former United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights