Cordula Droege
Dr Cordula Droege is the Chief Legal Officer and Head of the Legal Division of the ICRC, where she leads the ICRC’s efforts to uphold, implement and develop international humanitarian law. She joined the ICRC in 2005 and has held a number of positions in the field and at headquarters, including as Head of the Legal Advisers to Operations, and most recently as Chief of Staff to the President of the ICRC.
She has some twenty years of experience in the field of international law, and in her earlier career worked for the International Commission of Jurists, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Max Planck Institute for International Law. She holds a law degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg and an LL.M from the London School of Economics. Follow her @CDroegeICRC
Dr. Droege was profiled for ATLAS by Émilie Max, a researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and an independent consultant for international NGOs based in the Middle-East (Israel and Palestine, Lebanon). Learn more about Émilie's work at the end of this profile, and follow her @Mx_Emilie.
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What drew you to a career in international law and what were your first steps?
I became aware of human rights as a young teenager because my father was regularly travelling from Bonn to Geneva to the annual session of the Human Rights Commission. Not that I had any idea what this meant at all, but I instinctively felt that this was what I wanted to do because it had to do with justice. While I was privileged and protected, I witnessed and became aware relatively early that the world is a pretty appalling and unjust place.
After graduating from high school, I first studied literature, but turned to law instead in order to secure a path to a paying job. I found myself studying contract, criminal and administrative law instead of human rights, and was bored out of my mind. I only managed to study human rights very late.
How did you transition from human rights to international humanitarian law (IHL)?
My first non-academic job was with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva, and involved working on issues such as reparations for human rights violations and the fight against impunity. Since many of the violations that we were looking at were actually occurring during situations of armed conflict, I slowly became aware of the overlap between these two branches of international law.
When attending the negotiations on the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, I met the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). She was about to leave the organization and encouraged me to apply for her position. I did not have any IHL background but, coincidentally, the ICRC was looking for someone with knowledge of human rights for its legal division. I was hired, and learned IHL “on the go”. So working in IHL was not an accident but was never really the plan either. And how lucky I was. Today, the Geneva Conventions seem like a multilateral miracle to me and IHL is perhaps the most down-to-earth of all bodies of international law.
What have been the high points of your career thus far?
The main highlight are people. My boss at the ICJ, who is from Colombia, remains a mentor and an inspiration because he has always lived in accordance his beliefs. He was never after a career; he just wanted to fight torture, enforced disappearances and seek justice. Working for the ICJ allowed me to meet many human rights defenders working in their home countries, often at risk for themselves. Meeting people like Arthur Chaskalson (a lawyer of Nelson’s Mandela’s, later president of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, and later president of the ICJ), and so many others, was amazing. These men and women are heroes and heroines, and I find their example really motivating.
I had the opportunity to be present when the UN Working Group adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. There were families of disappeared people, who had been working for 25 years to achieve this result. They gave us a true lesson on the power and importance of not giving up. Half of that room had tears in their eyes – even the interpreters, who could not interpret anymore because they were crying too! It was a moment that I will never forget.
Finally, working with my colleagues from the ICRC Legal Division (both as a fellow legal adviser then and as the head now) is a constant highlight and my everyday motivation. We have a beautiful mixture of brainpower and camaraderie. There is a real sense of joint commitment to the work, to protection through law.
What are some of the challenges that you have faced, and how have you tackled them?
Overall, I feel lucky because, coming from a very safe and stable background, I benefited from an advance in life. But if you are asking about the particular situation as a woman, I think the main obstacle, like for quite a few women, was often my own lack of self-confidence.
At university, I never had a female professor in my four and a half years as an undergraduate student. They were few and far between in Germany, where the power imbalance was enormous within the legal system. Many times as a law student and as a lawyer, I have had remarks that were limiting in terms of what I could hope to achieve that male colleagues did not. Thankfully, I was less aware of it when I was younger than I am now, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing because I never felt victimized.
Do you have any advice for people, especially women, who are embarking on a career in international law?
Probably we should all give much less advice to others…
I sometimes think there is more pressure on younger professionals today, at least I have the feeling that they are often focused quite early on their “career”. I always tell them: do what you love because people will be best at doing what they love .Admittedly that is easier said than done.
I would encourage women specifically to speak up, to try not to lack self-confidence. This is not about becoming “alpha-male” and taking all the space, as these are not the type of people that we should imitate. On the contrary, the workplace is a nicer place with people who do not put themselves forward to the detriment of others. It is a fine balance to achieve. Have enough self-confidence while keeping one’s sense of self-criticism and humbleness and curiosity to learn from others.
Try not to give advice to mothers. Now that I have a son, I understand better that every woman experiences motherhood differently. As far as I am concerned, there is a special place in hell for people who give advice on sleep for children... It took me a while to realize that I did not need to take unwanted advice.
The last thing is to find balance between being grateful for what we (some of us) have as women and what we have inherited from the struggles of women before us, and continuing to fight for all that still needs to be achieved. When I complained to my mother in-law about the short maternity leave in Switzerland (which is already more than in many places in the world, but still, to my mind, reflects a conservative view of women), she reminded me that she had to quit her job when she had her kids in the seventies. We have come a long way, though not in all parts of the world, and depending much on socio-economic spheres.
There is no question that I have encountered many moments of open sexism or pernicious discrimination along my career. I remember many of them very vividly, but also think that there is no comparison to what it must have been like for our mothers’ generation and still is for women in many places. However, nothing is to be taken for granted. At the moment, there seems to be a backlash against women’s ownership of their lives and their bodies. But it’s like with everything: don’t be dewy-eyed, never give up, and celebrate the successes!
Dr. Droege was profiled for ATLAS by Émilie Max, a researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and an independent consultant for international NGOs based in the Middle-East (Israel and Palestine, Lebanon). Émilie previously worked for four years as a Legal Officer for the Directorate of International Law of the Swiss Department of Foreign of Affairs, where she focused on international humanitarian law and international criminal justice. She was also a teaching assistant to Professor Marco Sassòli at the University of Geneva, assisting with his classes on public international law (BA level) and practice of international humanitarian law (MA level). Émilie holds an LLM from the Geneva Academy, as well as an MA in Middle-Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (London, United Kingdom). She is fluent in French, English and German. Follow her @Mx_Emilie.