In this episode of “On Human Rights,” we meet Helen Durham, the Director of the International Law and Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Dr Durham is an Australian international humanitarian lawyer and took her time to talk to RWI about women in conflicts and explain why there is a need for a gender perspective on the laws of war.
It is about going beyond the paradigms we create seeing that women are always victims and men are always the perpetrators. We have to analyse what does the law of war say about human dignity? And there is a lot of work that we (ICRC) analyses what the needs really are, not just what we think they are.
Dr Durham played a significant role in making rape a war crime and is one of the world’s foremost experts on the laws of war. The Australian journalist Leigh Sales argued in an article that she’s probably one of Australia’s most influential woman ever. She was recently invited by the Australian Embassy to Sweden in order to deliver the first Raoul Wallenberg Address in Stockholm. The address was organised by the Embassy together with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Academy. See the video here.
About Helen Durham
Helen Anne Durham AO (born 1968), an international humanitarian lawyer, is the Director of (ICRC) since 2014. Durham served as director of international law, strategy, planning and research at the Australian Red Cross, and has worked as ICRC head of office in Sydney. She has a PhD in international humanitarian law and international criminal law, and is a senior fellow at Melbourne Law School.