Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

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The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is an international non-governmental organization , the oldest international women's peace organization in the world. It has its international office in Geneva, Switzerland, a branch in New York and advisor status to the United Nations .

history

International Congress of Women 1915 in The Hague. From left to right: 1st  Lucy Thoumaian - Armenia, 2nd  Leopoldine Kulka - Austria, 3rd  Laura Hughes - Canada, 4th  Rosika Schwimmer - Hungary, 5th  Anita Augspurg - Germany, 6th  Jane Addams - USA, 7th  Eugenie Hanner - USA, 8th  Aletta Jacobs - Netherlands, 9th  Chrystal Macmillan - England, 10th  Rosa Genoni - Italy, 11th  Anna Kleman - Sweden, 12th  Thora Daugaard - Denmark, 13th  Louise Keilhau - Norway

In response to the outbreak of World War I , a group of Dutch women's rights activists led by Aletta Jacobs , chairwoman of the Dutch women's suffrage association, organized the first international women's peace congress from April 28th to 30th, 1915 in The Hague (Netherlands); This meeting took the place of the planned Berlin Congress of the World Federation for Women's Suffrage (Engl. International Woman Suffrage Alliance , IWSA). Despite the chaos of war, over 1,000 women from twelve warring and neutral nations appeared. One result of the congress was the establishment of the forerunner organization of the WILPF, the “International Committee for Lasting Peace”. In addition to Aletta Jacobs, the founders included the chairwoman of the US Women's Peace Party, Jane Addams , as well as Emily Greene Balch , an American social politician and economist, the radical German women's rights activist Lida Gustava Heymann , the German artist Dore Meyer-Vax and many other.

At its first international congress after the end of the war, in Zurich in 1919, the organization was given its current name and began its activities. National committees were formed in numerous countries in the years that followed.

Jane Addams became the first president of the “Women's International League for Peace and Freedom”. After the USA entered the First World War, she was referred to as "the nation's most dangerous woman". In 1931 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her commitment . Emily Greene Balch (“the second most dangerous woman in the USA”) received the same award in 1946 for her presidency. She was Secretary General from 1919 to 1922, head of the American section from 1931 and again Secretary General of the WILPF in 1934/1935. In 1936 she was made honorary president. It was she who established the connection between the WILPF and the League of Nations . In 1982 Alva Myrdal , head of the Swedish delegation to the UN Disarmament Commission, also received the Nobel Peace Prize. Edith Ballantyne was General Secretary for many years and later also President . She is still working as a UN advisor in Geneva today. Krishna Ahooja-Patel became president in 2001.

The WILPF currently has 43 national sections and around 40,000 members worldwide. It has advisory status at the Economic and Social Council of the UN ( ECOSOC ), the UNESCO Conference on Trade Development ( UNCTAD ) and, together with UNICEF, special status at the ILO and FAO in Rome.

International Secretary General is the lawyer Madeleine Rees .

Germany

International women's league and freedom logo

A branch of the WILPF was also established in Germany in June 1919. The German committee is called the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom (IFFF). The IFFF was based in Munich until 1933 and was decisively shaped by Anita Augspurg and Lida Gustava Heymann . Regional IFFF groups were formed in numerous German cities. In 1919 there were 42 groups, and in 1928 there were 80 groups with a total of over 2000 members. Anita Augspurg and Lida Gustava Heymann published a monthly membership magazine from January 1919: The woman in the state .

From January 4 to 6, 1929, the IFFF held an international congress in Frankfurt am Main on the subject of "Modern methods of war and the protection of the civilian population". The honorary committee of the congress included u. a. Albert Einstein , Romain Rolland , Bertrand Russell , Käthe Kollwitz and Selma Lagerlöf . There an international disarmament conference was called for, which was then convened in Geneva in 1932.

In January 1933, despite attempts by the SA to interfere , the IFFF's last rally took place in the basement of the Hofbräuhaus in Munich in front of almost 1,000 listeners. After the National Socialists came to power shortly afterwards, the IFFF was one of the first organizations to be banned. Many members went abroad (such as Lida Gustava Heymann , Anita Augspurg , Gertrud Baer , Frida Perlen , Constanze Hallgarten and others); others stayed and went underground (including Auguste Kirchhoff ), were expropriated, arrested and sent to concentration camps (e.g. Magda Hoppstock-Huth ).

After the war, Magda Hoppstock-Huth, who had been elected to the Hamburg citizenship in 1946 , rebuilt the organization in the sectors of the western allies from there. In 1956 she traveled to Moscow with six women from the West German women's peace movement , a second IFFF delegate and one from the Democratic Women's Federation of Germany - this was probably the first independent women's delegation there. In view of the arms race , the latter wanted to enter into a peace policy dialogue with the women's organizations of the USSR .

In 1960, at the height of the Cold War , the " Save Freedom Committee ", founded by CDU politician Rainer Barzel together with Franz Josef Strauss (CSU) and headed by Barzel, denounced the IFFF chairwoman (and hundreds of other people from the public life) as "communist controlled". The IFFF successfully filed a lawsuit and Barzel had to withdraw his allegation, but as a result numerous women resigned from the organization. Local groups remained only in West Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Munich and Duisburg.

From 1972 to 1974 and from 1986 to 1992 the Bavarian Green MP and professor of sociology Eleonore Romberg was international president of the WILPF. She remained chairman of the German section until 2001 and honorary president until her death in 2004. She was honored with the Bavarian Peace Prize of the German Peace Society and the city of Munich with the medal " Munich shines ". In 1992, Barbara Lochbihler became the international general secretary of WILPF in Geneva. In 1995 she organized the Peacetrain to Beijing - a WILPF train journey through the Eastern Bloc countries - to the World Conference on Women in Beijing . Lochbihler became Secretary General of the German section of Amnesty International in 1999 ; since 2009 she has been a member of the European Parliament for the Greens.

The IFFF has its seat in Berlin , the chairman of the IFFF is currently Irmgard Hofer (formerly Heilberger) .

literature

  • Corinna Desch: Flight and Exile in the Context of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom IFFF 1933 - 1945 , in: Zwischenwelt. Journal of the Theodor Kramer Society , Issues 1-2, 2012 ISSN  1606-4321 pp. 50–53 (Lit.)
  • Catherine Foster: Women for all seasons. The story of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. University of Georgia Press, Athens (Georgia) 1989
  • Hiltrud Häntzschel : " Only those who are cowardly take up the weapon." Munich, center of the women's peace movement 1899-1933. In: Sybille Krafft, Christina Böck, ed .: Between the Fronts. Munich women in war and peace 1900–1950. Munich 1995, pp. 18-40
  • Ute Kätzel: "There were only a few, but the state felt threatened." Women's peace movement from 1899 to 1933. In: Praxis Geschichte, Heft 3, 1997, pp. 9–13

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patricia Ward D'Itri: Cross currents in the international women's movement, 1848-1948. Bowling Green, Ohio 1999, pp. 130-135.
  2. ↑ Ute Kätzel: There were only a few, but the state felt threatened. Women's peace movement from 1899 to 1933. In: Praxis Geschichte, Issue 3/1997, pp. 9–13. Archive link ( Memento from February 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ WILPF International Secretariat Archive link ( memento from September 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), last checked on September 28, 2013
  4. ↑ Hiltrud Häntzschel: “Only those who are cowardly take up the weapon.” Munich - center of the women's peace movement 1899–1933. In: Krafft, Sybille; Böck, Christina (ed.): Between the fronts. Munich women in war and peace 1900–1950. Munich 1995, pp. 18-40.
  5. ↑ Dullinger, Angelica (ed.): "We are the summit". In the peace train to the 4th World Women's Conference. Women's CVs - Perspectives for Peace. Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-931922-64-2 .
  6. ↑ s. Executive Board ( Memento from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive )