Helga Pedersen (politician, 1911)

Inger Helga Pedersen (born June 24, 1911 in Hulby Møllegård , Tårnborg ; † January 27, 1980 in Korsør ) was a Danish lawyer and politician . She served as Danish Minister of Justice from 1950 to 1953 and was elected as the first woman to be a judge at the European Court of Human Rights in 1971 .

Life

Helga Pedersen was born in 1911 as the daughter of Jens Peder Nicolaj Pedersen (1877–1955) and Vilhelmine Sofie Kolding (1884–1973). She attended Slagelse High School until 1930 and then studied law at the University of Copenhagen from 1931 to 1936 . She then found a job in the Danish Ministry of Justice. From 1940 to 1946 she worked there as a private secretary. A scholarship enabled her to spend a year in the United States in 1946 and study at Columbia University in New York .

Back in Denmark, she was appointed interim judge at Østre Landsret in 1947 . A year later she moved to the Copenhagen City Court . There she initially held the office of interim judge again, but received a full judge's position in 1949.

When a minority government from Venstre , to which she belonged, and Det Konservative Folkeparti were formed in Denmark in October 1950 , she was appointed Minister of Justice by the new Prime Minister Erik Eriksen . During his reign she was a member of the Constitutional Commission, whose proposals for constitutional reform were approved by the Danish population in a referendum in May 1953. The parliamentary elections of September 22, 1953 resulted in a government led by Social Democrats under Hans Hedtoft . Venstre was no longer involved in this, so that Pedersen left the cabinet after only one term. But she was able to win a seat in the Folketing , which she held until 1964.

She initially returned to her previous job in the Copenhagen City Court. From 1956 she was a judge at Østre Landsret, and in 1964 she was appointed judge at Højesteret , Denmark's highest court. In 1971 she was the first woman to be elected judge at the European Court of Human Rights . After the end of her first term in 1980, she was proposed again as a candidate by the Danish government, but died the day before the election at the age of 68.

From 1949 to 1974 she was a member of the Danish UNESCO Commission, and between 1949 and 1970 she was repeatedly a member of the Danish delegation to the General Assembly of UNESCO. Pedersen was also committed to women's rights and from 1949 to 1950 chaired the National Council of Danish Women, in which all Danish women's associations are united. She represented Denmark at the meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 1950 .

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• Doc. 4459 (December 17, 1979) and Doc. 4515 (April 8, 1980) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
• Inger Dübeck: Helga Pedersen . In: Dansk kvindebiografisk leksikon . ( online )
• International Biographical Archive 21/1954 from May 17, 1954
• Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights . Volume 14, 1971. pp. 54-56. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ( online )