Eglantyne Jebb

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Eglantyne Jebb (1920)

Eglantyne Doey Jebb (born August 25, 1876 in Ellesmere , † December 17, 1928 in Geneva ) was a British activist for children's rights . She is the founder of the Save the Children organization and a pioneer of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child .

Life

Eglantyne Jebb grew up as the daughter of a wealthy family in Ellesmere , a small town in Shropshire . From 1895 to 1898 she studied at the College Lady Margaret Hall of the University of Oxford English literature. In 1898 she began working as a primary school teacher in Marlborough . However, due to health problems, she had to give up this job two years later. In 1903 she began to work for the Charity Organization Society in Cambridge , for which she conducted research on social problems. She published a study in which she drew attention to child poverty.

In 1913 she joined the work of her sister Dorothy Buxton and her husband Charles Buxton for the Macedonian Relief Fund , which campaigned for refugees from the Balkan Wars . The outbreak of World War I and her poor health made Eglantyne Jebb return to England, where she and Dorothy Buxton edited Cambridge Magazine , which endeavored to provide balanced coverage of the war and its social consequences.

Save the Children

Immediately after the end of the war, Eglantyne Jebb traveled to Germany and Austria-Hungary and once more to the Balkans to set up aid programs for children suffering from the consequences of the war. With her sister Dorothy, she founded the Fight the Famine Council in 1919 , which was soon renamed the Save the Children Fund and also included aid projects in Russia , Armenia , Bulgaria , Romania and Greece in its program. What was unusual about it was not only the international claim, but above all the commitment to countries that had been opponents of a war that had just ended. Therefore, Jebb was the victim of many hostilities, but was still able to win the support of many celebrities through extensive public relations work and raise the necessary financial resources.

Geneva Declaration of Children's Rights

Memorial stone for Eglantyne Jebb in Geneva

In the 1920s, Jebb began campaigning with the League of Nations for the adoption of an international convention on the rights of children. In 1924 the first declaration of children's rights was passed, known as the Déclaration de Genève or Geneva Declaration . This was the first official formulation of the specific rights of children. In 1934 the validity of the declaration was confirmed once more by the League of Nations. After the Second World War it was expanded to become the “Declaration on the Rights of the Child”, which was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1954 and which in turn formed the basis for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been in force since 1989.

Eglantyne Jebb spent the last years of her life in Geneva and died of an operation just four years after signing the declaration at the age of 52.

Publications

  • Cambridge. A Brief Study in Social Questions. Cambridge, Macmillan & Bowes 1906.
  • The Real Enemy. Weardale Press 1928.
  • Save the Child. Weardale Press, 1929 (edited posthumously by Dorothy Buxton).

literature

Web links

Commons : Eglantyne Jebb  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Jebb, Eglantyne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jebb, Eglantyne Doey (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British child rights activist, founder of Save the Children
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Ellesmere (Shropshire)
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1928
Place of death Geneva