Minerva Bernardino

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Minerva Bernardino (* 1907 in Seibo , Dominican Republic , † August 29, 1998 in the Dominican Republic) was a Latin American politician.

Origin and education

Minerva Bernardino was born in Seibo in the east of the Dominican Republic in 1907 as the daughter of Alvaro and Altagracia Bernardino. She was the granddaughter of a provincial governor and the oldest child in a family of four girls and three boys. She came from an unconventional family, especially when it came to respecting women's rights. "My mother was very progressive," she told Ann Foster from Christian Science Monitor, "and I was raised in an atmosphere that was very unusual in our country at the time". Her father obviously shared her mother's views. When Bernardine once complained about the social restrictions for women, he replied, "Go outside if you want, travel if you want, and if someone wants to criticize, let them do it."

At the age of 15, Bernadino was an orphan and, together with her eldest brother, looked after her siblings. “We both believed in equality from the start,” she told Foster, “and we decided that he should go to law, that my sister should become a doctor as she wished, and that I should plunge into public life should. ”While completing a bachelor's degree, she made a career in public service. In 1926 she became head of department in the Dominican Ministry of Development and Communication, in 1928 head of a section in the Ministry of Agriculture and from 1931 to 1933 head of the statistics office in the Ministry of Education.

Women's rights work and international activity

From 1929 she was chairwoman of the "Acción Feminista Dominica", a women's rights organization that was credited with successfully enshrining women's suffrage and civil rights for Dominican women in the new 1942 constitution.

In 1933, Bernardino was elected as a Dominican delegate to the "Inter-American Women's Commission" held in Montevideo . This commission was the first to be set up to promote women's rights. It was supported by the Organization of American States and met every five years. At the 1938 Commission meeting in Lima , Bernardino was its rapporteur. In the fall of 1939, Ana Rosa de Martinez Guerrero from Argentina was chairman and Bernardino was elected to represent it.

Although she was formally representative of the Dominican Republic, which was ruled dictatorially from 1930 to 1961 by Rafael Trujillo , she was hostile to the regime. She pursued her own agenda on the international stage. She always kept in touch with her homeland, but has not entered it for decades since the mid-1930s.

During the Second World War in November 1943, she effectively presented a resolution calling on the women of Chile and Argentina to put pressure on their governments to sever diplomatic relations with the Axis powers . To stand on the side of the Allies contradicted the attitude of the Argentine government under Juan Domingo Perón in the early 1940s . When the Argentine women's organization “Junta de la Victoria” with 50,000 members raised funds for the Allies, it was dissolved and the Argentine government replaced Martinez Guerrero as delegate of the “Inter-American Commission” with Angelina Fuselli. On November 3, 1943, Bernardino was elected to the vacant management position, she held the office for six years.

In 1945, Bernardino was one of only four participants in the “Inter-American Conference” on the problems of war and peace, which took place in Chapultepec , Mexico . She was the only woman with voting rights. In the “Act of Chapultepec”, all American states committed themselves to mutual support in the event of aggression against one of the members.

Commitment to the UN

Also in 1945, Bernardino was a participant in the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco and was one of only four women (next to 156 men) to sign the United Nations Charter . Bernadino, together with Bodil Begtrup from Denmark and Bertha Lutz from Brazil , demanded that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without discrimination on grounds of race, gender, origin or belief must be enshrined in the document.

In 1946, Bernadino teamed up with Eleanor Roosevelt , Jean MacKanzie from New Zealand , Evdokia Uralova from the USSR, and Ellen Wilkinson from the UK , and they wrote an Open Letter to the Women of the World calling for them to play a more active role in politics and government take over.

As a leading Latin American feminist , Minerva Bernardino was the driving force behind the creation of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW). In 1997, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that the commission had been a substantial part of Bernardino's creation .

In January 1950, Bernardino was appointed permanent representative of her country to the United Nations. She participated in a total of 15 UN General Assembly periods. She became the first vice president of the influential UN Economic and Social Council , and later also the first vice president of UNICEF .

reception

“Bernadino was a mouthpiece for women after World War II,” said Kristen Timothy, deputy director of the UN Department for the Advancement of Women, “because she understood that afterward women's lives couldn't be the same . ”The“ Minerva Bernardino Foundation ”in Santo Domingo was established to carry on its mission to make clear the contributions of women to society and“ to develop female leaders for the coming millennium ”.

Publications

  • Bernardino, Minerva: Lucha, agonía y esperanza: trayectoria triunfal de mi vida. , Editora Corripio, Santo Domingo, República Dominicana, 1993

literature

  • Crossette, Barbara: Minerva Bernardino, 91, Dominican Feminist, in The New York Times , September 4, 1998
  • DuBois, Ellen; Derby, Lauren: The strange case of Minerva Bernardino: Pan American and United Nations women's right activist , Women's Studies International Forum , 32 (1): 44, 2009
  • Arystanbekova, Akmaral: Diplomacy: Too important to be left to men? . UN Chronicle. 39 (3): 62, 2002
  • Jain, Devaki: Women, development, and the UN: a sixty-year quest for equality and justice , Indiana University Press., Bloomington, 2005
  • Morsink, Johannes: Women's Rights in the Universal Declaration . Human Rights Quarterly. 13 (2): 249, 1991
  • Gaer, Felice: Women, international law and international institutions: The case of the United Nations , Women's Studies International Forum. 32 (1): 61, 2009
  • Pietilä, Hilkka: The unfinished story of women and the United Nations , United Nations Non-governmental Liaison Service, New York, 2007

Web links

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  1. ↑ a b c d https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bernardino-minerva-1907-1998 Women in World History , Bernardino, Minerva (1907-1998) , Gale Research Inc., 2002
  2. ^ Crossette, Barbara Minerva Bernardino, 91, Dominican Feminist . The New York Times, September 4, 1998
  3. ↑ Background information based on The United Nations and the Advancement of Women, 1945–1996 from the United Nations Blue Book Series and the United Nations CD-Rom Women Go Global , 2000
  4. ↑ Pietilä, Hilkka: The unfinished story of women and the United Nations , United Nations Non-governmental Liaison Service, New York, 2007
  5. ^ Jain, Devaki: Women, development, and the UN: a sixty-year quest for equality and justice , Indiana University Press., Bloomington, 2005
  6. ↑ Atanay, Reginaldo, Fundación Minerva Bernardino entrega becas . El Diario La Prensa. September 4, 2002
personal data
SURNAME Bernardino, Minerva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dominican women's rights activist and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Seibo
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1998
Place of death Dominican Republic