J. Jobe and Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa Lecture

The J. Jobe and Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa Lecture supports regular lectures on contemporary issues of global significance. For more than two decades, this fund has brought renowned women from across the globe to lecture and meet with classes. Holders of the lectureship have included well-known “grassroots” leaders in the struggle for human rights and international understanding.

2024 Lecture

Ending Gender Apartheid: Lessons from Afghanistan

Keynote speaker: Karima Bennoune, former UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights; Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law, University of Michigan

4 p.m., Monday, October 14, 2024

Alumni Lounge, Pyle Center

About the speaker

Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She specializes in public international law and international human rights law, including issues related to culture, extremism and terrorism, and women’s human rights.

Bennoune served as the UN special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2015 to 2021. She also was appointed as an expert for the International Criminal Court in 2017 during the reparations phase of the groundbreaking case The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, which concerned intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites in Mali.

In September 2023, she addressed the UN Security Council about gender apartheid in Afghanistan. In December 2023, she traveled to South Africa with Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai to participate with her and Nelson Mandela’s widow, the prominent human rights advocate Graça Machel, in a panel following Malala’s Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture. The Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law presented her with its 2024 Prominent Woman in International Law Award.

Since 2018, she has been a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law. A former legal adviser for Amnesty International, she has carried out human rights missions in most regions of the world.

About the lecture

Marguerite Jacqmin Soffa ’46 established this fund to support an annual public lecture on a contemporary issue of global significance by a distinguished woman in international public life. The lecture is sponsored by the International Division, with current co-sponsors including the Human Rights Program, Global Legal Studies Center, Center for South Asia, and 4W Initiative.

Past speakers

2023: Antonia Urrejola, lawyer and former Foreign Minister of Chile, “Accountability for Crimes against Humanity: From Pinochet to the Present”
2022: Ma Thida, human rights activist, surgeon, and writer
2021: Sakena Yacoobi, president of the Afghan Institute of Learning, “As Women Rise, so Does the Nation”
2020-2021: Wanjiku Kabira,”Shifting The Center Of Gravity: Women’s Movement And Constitution-Making In Kenya”
2019: Charlotte Bunch, “The Dance of Feminism with Human Rights: Reflections on Three Decades of Global Women’s Human Rights Organizing”
2019: Brigitte Baptiste, “Queering Ecology”
2018: May Sabe Phyu, “Gender Inclusion for Lasting Peace”
2017: Vandana Shiva, “Women Lead the Way: From Violence to Non-Violence, from Greed to Sharing, From Hate to Love”
2015: Renana Jhavala, “Structural Inequalities and Poverty: Organizing for Economic Rights in India”
2014: Jean Geran, “Right to Identity: Child Abandonment, Trafficking, Migration and Protection”
2013: Sahar Elmougy, “Resurgence of the Feminine: Transformation of Egyptian Psyche”
2012: Fatima Sadiqi, professor of linguistics and gender studies at the University of Fes, “North African Women’s Rights in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring”
2012: Thulisile Madonsela, the Public Protector of South Africa, “Righting State Wrongs: Enforcing the South African Constitution through the office of the Public Protector”
2010: Luz María de la Mora Sánchez, an expert in foreign trade relations and internal public policy, on Latin American investment strategies, economic growth, political stability, “Latin America’s New Stature in the Global Economy”
2010: Yakin Ertürk, former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, “Universalizing Women’s Human Rights: The Quest for Gender-Just Peace”
2009: Radhika Coomaraswamy, Undersecretary-General of the United Nations
2008: Virginia Vargas, Peruvian activist, author, professor, and sociologist, “Women’s Long March for Equality and Democracy in Latin America”
2004: Veena Das, Krieger Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, “Political Violence and Daily Life in India”
2002: Mary Burton, commissioner of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, former president of the anti-apartheid organization Blask Sash, “Aspects of Reconciliation: Acknowledgement, Atonement and Redress”
2001: Estela Barnes de Carlotto, president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, “Disappeared Children in Argentina: the Work of the Grandmothers of Plazo de Mayo”