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| Bianca Jagger |
Bianca Jagger:
'Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, and the Culture of Impunity:
achieving the missing Millennium Development Goal target'
Once again he Longford Trust, the charity founded in memory
of Frank Pakenham (Lord Longford) held its annual Longford lecture on Thursday 21st
November in the splendid surroundings of Church House, Westminster.
The Longford Trust organizes an annual Longford Lecture on
questions of social and penal reform.
Past speakers have included President Mary McAleese of Ireland, Clive
Stafford Smith, Sir Hugh Orde, Lady (Brenda) Hale, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC,
Lord (Ian) Blair, Cherie Booth QC, Archbishop John Sentamu and Archbishop
Desmond Tutu. It also awards an annual
Longford Prize to an outstanding individual or organization working in the
field of prison and social reform. It
funds Longford Scholarships for ex-prisoners who want to rebuild their lives
through education. And it offers
financial support to Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners.
This year's lecture was delivered by the international Human
Rights activist and campaigner Bianca Jagger who demonstrated she has what it takes to be a Street Fightin' Women. Her long credentials as a civil
rights activist were emphasised by the journalist Jon Snow who pointed out he
first met her in the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua, the capital of her home
country of Nicaragua in 1983 in the uneasy days after the fall of Somoza and
the Sandinista Revolution. Since then she has been a fearless and active
campaigner against abuse of Human Rights and is the founder and chair of the
Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She is a Council of Europe Goodwill
Ambassador, a member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty
International, USA, a IUCN Plant A Pledge Ambassador, a member of the Coalition
for the International Criminal Court, and a trustee of the Amazon Charitable
Trust.
For over three decades she has been a voice for the most
vulnerable members of society, campaigning for human rights, civil liberties,
peace, social justice and environmental protection throughout the world. Her
work has been recognised by the 2004 Right Livelihood Award, the 1998 American
Civil Liberties Union Award, the 1997 Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight
Award for Leadership, and the 1994 United Nations Earth Day International
Award. She has been willing to go to trouble spots. She has faced down Serb
soldiers in Kosovo and a death squad in Honduras. She visited Iraq as part of a
fact-finding mission during the row over WMDs.
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| Bianca Jagger |
She was born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias in 1950, in Managua,
the capital of Nicaragua. After her parents’ divorce, she was raised by her
mother. Witnessing the discrimination of a patriarchal society against a single
working woman inspired the young Bianca to become an instrument of change in
the world. She was determined never to be regarded as a second-class citizen
because of her gender. As a girl of 10, Bianca Jagger noticed how differently
family friends in her native Nicaragua treated her mother to her father, Carlos
Perez-Mora. He, a successful businessman, enjoyed deference and respect. Not so
his ex-wife.
After their divorce Dora Macias Somarriba, a beautiful
thirty-something, was forced to support her three young children by going out
to work. It was not something middle-class ladies did in 1950s Managua. But
Dora ignored the snide comments; she opened a health-food restaurant –
conveniently located near La Imaculata convent school, where Bianca studied.
But her daughter never forgot her mother’s hardship. “I promised myself I was
never going to suffer that fate.”
As a teenager, she participated in student demonstrations
against the terrors inflicted by President Anastasio Somoza's National Guard.
This inspired her to pursue her interest in politics. She received a
scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of
Political Science. It was there that she discovered the value of freedom and
democracy, the rule of law, judicial review, habeas corpus and respect for
human rights - concepts she had only dreamt about in Nicaragua.
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| Her 1971 wedding to Mick Jagger |
Best known in the popular imagination for her 9 year
marriage to Mick Jagger she was 4 months pregnant with Jade Jagger when they
wed in a Catholic ceremony in St. Tropez, France in 1971. Now her daughter Jade
has two grown-up daughters, Assisi and Amba. Assisi, 21, is about to make
Bianca Jagger a great grandmother. She was also a close friend of Andy Warhol
and she added to the New Year's festivities at the famous Club 54 by riding
into the party on a horse. The horse's thoughts have not been preserved for
posterity.
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| Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol |
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| Bianca and her daughter, Jade Jagger |
She outlined with dismal certainty and forcefulness the
extent of this violence and how deeply it was ingrained and how pervasive was
the impunity for those who conduct it. She singled out Iran, Sudan and Saudi
Arabia who maintain capital punishment against women who commit "adultery."
There are over 8,300 recorded bride burnings in India, a horrible cruel death
and no doubt a figure which does not fully reflect the reality. For the reality
in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China is that women are regarded as a burden
and there is widespread violence and murder, a mass infanticide. In India the
figures are dramatic for the cumulative effect of this on population with an
estimated 50 million women "missing" in the population due to the
cumulative effects of abortion on the grounds of sex, infanticide and neglect. India now has 914 females for every 1,000 males.
Tonight though, we saw the steel of a women who inspired by her mother's example has been fighting the good fight for many years for the oppressed and downtrodden Trenchantly and systematically she set out the climate of violence against women throughout the world and the toleration and acceptance which allows this to continue with impunity. She was a passionate advocate for a better more respectful world free from gender based violence. She saw this campaign to end violence against women and girls as part of the march of Human Rights, the struggle in the 19th century was against slavery, in the 20th century against Totalitarianism and in the 21st century devoted to eradicating violence against women.
She outlined her experience in war zones where rape was used
as a weapon of war. This point was graphically emphasised in the Q & A
session afterwards by a Syrian journalist emphasising the effect of 41 years of
totalitarianism on her country and the murder and sexual abuse of females in
the conflict over the past three years. Bianca Jagger's Longford Lecture was a
sobering reminder of how much needs to be done to make equality and the
realising of women's potential a reality. It was also a reminder of what a
powerful advocate she is for decency and respect in a world where women are too
often the victims of systemic violence.
Ms Jagger argued that “embedded deep in our cultures still
lurks an institutional belief that women are inferior”. She appealed to the world leaders to adopt
what she called “the missing Millennium Development Goal” of eliminating
violence against women and described ending violence against women and
achieving gender equality as “the paramount moral challenge of our century”.
She highlighted shocking statistics that revealed 60,000
women were raped and 400,000 women were sexually assaulted in the UK last year,
while a massive 1.2million suffered some form of domestic abuse. In contrast
there were just 5,651 rape prosecutions and only 111,891 for domestic violence.
She said “It’s common misconception that sexual violence on this scale happens
only in the developing world. I’m afraid to say that sexual violence against
women is a global crisis and the developed world is not exempt. There is a
culture of silence and shame surrounding sexual assault – only one in 10 is
reported in the UK."
Look on her trust's website to see (and
admire) the full extent of her advocacy and campaigning:
The Longford Trust takes seriously its mission to continue
Frank Pakenham's work and to encourage organisations to persevere with the
often unpopular cause of penal reform. One of the ways it does this is through
the annual Longford Prize for work in this area. This year it was presented to The
Prison Radio Association (PRA) and collected by its co-founder Roma Hooper.
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| Prison Radio |
The Prison Radio Association (PRA) aims to change the lives
of serving prisoners through the power of radio. An award-winning education
charity, the PRA runs National Prison Radio (NPR) in partnership with the
National Offender Management Service (NOMS). The service is available to
prisoners across England and Wales directly in their cells. The PRA also
provides support, guidance and expertise to existing prison radio projects and
advises prisons interested in setting up radio projects and radio training
facilities. The PRA was established as a charity in 2006 in response to a
growing demand from prisons to engage in prison radio.
The Longford Trust was established in 2002 by friends, family
and admirers of Lord Longford (1905-2001) to celebrate his achievements and to
further the goals he pursued in the fields of social and prison reform
Founded in Frank Pakenham's memory and run by writer Peter
Stanford, the Longford Trust has three aims. Firstly, the annual lecture;
secondly, a programme of scholarships for ex-prisoners who are taking on
further education and thirdly, awards for an individual or organisation that
has done outstanding work in penal or social areas. Generous tribute was
rightly paid by Jon Snow to the writer and former editor of the Catholic Herald
Peter Stanford who has headed up the Trust since its inception and been
responsible for Trojan work in expanding its scope and its fundraising. His
biography of Lord Longford was the basis for Channel 4's 2006 multi-award
winning drama, Longford.
For once the needs of Justice have been served by Trial and
sentencing then the needs of Society are only served afterwards by stopping
re-offending and that is the area where the UK’s Prison System is an expensive
failure. Is a prison sentence the only way to tackle criminality or do we need
to change the emphasis to rehabilitation? As Peter Stanford points out on the
Longford Trust’s site;
“The benefit of such a dual approach (punishment and
rehabilitation) is that it delivers what society really wants – released
in-mates who do not offend against the rest of us again. Instead what the
present overcrowded, punishment-obsessed prison system turns out is 80 per cent
of under-21 years who reoffend within two years of release and nigh on 70 per
cent of over 21s. It is a pitiful result that costs us all a fortune. We spend
around £40,000 a year on each prison place.”
To learn more about the work of the Longford Trust and how
to support it see the website;
Frank Longford said often during
his life that he would like his epitaph to be ‘the outcasts' outcast’. It
summed up a long career as a politician, writer and campaigner on social and
prison policy which was all about standing up for the unpopular, the unloved,
the underdog and those on the margins of society. He was first a minister in
Clement Attlee’s post Second World War Labour government, where as Deputy
Foreign Secretary he played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of West
Germany. From 1964 to 1968, he was a member of Harold Wilson’s Cabinet.
He started visiting prisoners in
1930 and continued until his death. He was assistant to Sir William Beveridge
on his landmark report of 1942 which laid the basis for the Welfare State. In
1956 he founded New Bridge, one of the first organisations in Britain seeking
to create links between prisoners and the community, and in 1963 chaired the
committee on crime whose recommendations led to the establishment of the parole
system. On leaving the government, he launched New Horizon, a charity for young
people in need.
The Pakenham Family have roots in
both Ireland and England and have influenced both countries over the years. In
Dublin they are commemorated in Longford and Aungier Streets and the former
Pakenham Hall near Castlepollard in Co. Meath was renamed Tullynally (The
Gaelic name) by Tom Pakenham (The current Lord Longford, although he does not
use his titles) when he took it over in 1961. Tom Pakenham is himself an author
and historian of note as are his sisters, Lady Antonia Fraser, Rachel
Billington and Judith Kazantzis.
As Jon Snow remarked somewhat wryly it was Frank Pakenham's
genius that so many people assembled in Church House tonight were still working
for him and his causes so many years after his death.
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