Marguerite Frick-Cramer

Marguerite "Meggy" Frick-Cramer (28 December 1887 – 22 October 1963), born Renée-Marguerite Cramer, was a Swiss legal scholar, historian, and humanitarian activist. Simultaneously, she became the first female historian to become a deputy professor in Switzerland. As the first woman to co-draft a Geneva Convention in 1929, Frick-Cramer was a pioneer for gender equality in the development of international humanitarian law.

Biography

Family background, education and early career

Cramer's family on the paternal side likely originated from what is now Germany and acquired the citizenship of the Republic of Geneva in 1668. Her father Louis Cramer was a theatre director, who also became the president of the Calvinist ecclesiastical court of the Protestant Church of Geneva. Her mother, Eugénie Léonie Micheli, Cramer's maternal grandfather Louis Micheli (1836-1888), who was a rich agronomist and a gentleman farmer, became a member of the ICRC in 1869, just six years after its founding, and served as its vice-president from 1876 until his death. After losing control of the major public offices in Geneva, his Patrician class turned to banking and philanthropic activities at the end of the 19th century, However, she did not practise the profession and instead turned her interest on researching constitutional law and the history of Switzerland, earning her doctorate in that field. Her best known book became Genève et les Suisses which she published in 1914 to commemorate the centenary of Geneva joining the Swiss Confederation. It was supervised by Professor Charles Borgeaud, who was one of her relatives.

According to ICRC historian Daniel Palmieri, it was Cramer's idea to cope with the big data about individual fates by introducing a system of index cards linked to catalogues.

Cramer also fundraised for the under-financed agency: in spring of 1916 she performed a play with a number of colleagues titled Le Château historique! ("the historical palace!"), a comedy in three acts by Alexandre Bisson and Julien Berr de Turique. Cramer played the heroine Marguerite Baudoin. The performance raised some 3,000 Swiss francs.

Between March and April 1917, Cramer officially became the first female delegate of the ICRC when she was sent on a mission to Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. - recommended the appointment of Cramer as a member of the committee, which at the time was made up exclusively of men. Naville, who hailed from Geneva's second-oldest family, Her career as an academic was short-lived, and she took up new responsibilities at the ICRC before finishing her first semester as a lecturer. Despite the hesitations some of its members felt in allowing a woman to join its ranks, the Committee understood that such change would be inevitable, largely because the war had deeply altered people's perception of gender equality. As a result, Cramer became the first woman to become a member of the governing body of any international organization, most notably during the Russian Revolution and later as a deputy for Fridtjof Nansen when he became the High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations.

Frick-Cramer was made an honorary member, and continued to dedicate her activities to the development of international humanitarian law: her focus became the extension of international conventions to protect both military and civil victims of war. She became one of the principal actors involved in the writing of the 1929 Geneva Convention about the treatment of prisoners of war. During a diplomatic conference in July of that year, Frick-Cramer was the only female expert participant and as such the first woman to co-draft a Geneva Convention. The treaty was considered a partial success as its implementation depended on the goodwill of the warring parties.

She also played a key role in the "Tokyo-project" which aimed to provide protection for civilians of "enemy" nations caught up in the territory of an opposing war party.

Due to the emerging system of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, the ICRC decided in March 1935 to transform its working group for civilians into one for political prisoners. Frick-Cramer was a member of both the former and the latter.

Second World War

Shortly after the beginning of the Second World War, the ICRC set up the Central Agency for Prisoners of War. It was the successor of the IPWA and based on the 1929 Geneva Convention which Frick-Cramer had helped to create. In September 1939, she was once again elected as a regular member of the ICRC, as opposed to the honorary membership she held for the previous 17 years. and his successor Burckhardt to intervene on behalf of civilians held by Nazi Germany, especially in the concentration camps, but to no avail. Frick-Cramer continued to promote the idea of the "Tokyo-project" and submitted the text of a draft convention which would have merged the conventions protecting soldiers and civilians. Though it was turned down, the adoption of the 1949 Geneva Conventions was still«the conclusion of a long process in which she played a crucial role.» «The small grande dame» – as many called Frick-Cramer with great affection She was survived by her husband who died in 1981, her daughter Jacqueline and her three grandchildren.

Legacy

From June until September 2009, when the University of Geneva celebrated its 450th anniversary, a larger-than-life portrait of Frick-Cramer was part of the exposition "FACES à FACES" on the facade of the Uni Dufour building, in sight of the Musée Rath where she once started her ICRC career.

In 2019, the project 100elles in Geneva – where 549 streets are named after men and only 43 after women – put up a temporary street sign with Frick-Cramer's name at the Avenue Blanc in the Sécheron quarter of Geneva, where the ICRC and the United Nations Office as well as many permanent missions to the UN are based.

A 2020 portrait by an ICRC librarian stresses that Frick-Cramer left behind«the memory of a woman confident in the value of the humanitarian ideal, and a tenacious and determined worker who was inventive and innovative in the way she thought about international humanitarian law. She believed that the ICRC's activities were not limited by past Conventions and resolutions, but that it had both "the right and the duty to innovate whenever the laws of humanity require it."»

Selected works Dijk, Boyd van, 'Marguerite Frick-Cramer: A Life Spent Shaping the Geneva Conventions', in Immi Tallgren (ed.), Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces? (Oxford, 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 May 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198868453.003.0018, accessed 4 Dec. 2024. Genève et les Suisses. Histoire des nigociations pniliminaires I l’entrie de Genève dans le Corps helvitique 1641-1792, Geneva 1914 Rapatriement des prisonniers de guerre centraux en Russie et en Sibérie et des prisonniers de guerre russes en Allemagne, in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, Vol. 2, no. 17, May 1920, pp. 526–556 Appel du Dr Nansen en faveur des réfugiés en Asie Mineure et en Grèce, in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, Vol. 4, no. 48, December 1922, pp. 1108–1109 A propos des projets de conventions internationales réglant le sort des prisonniers, in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, No. 74, February 1925, pp. 73–84 Organisation d'un bureau central de renseignements, Geneva 1932 Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et les Conventions internationales pour les prisonniers de guerre et les civils, in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, No. 293, May 1943, pp. 386–402 Au service des familles dispersées, in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, No. 304, April 1944, pp. 307–317 Im Dienste der getrennten Familien, Geneva 1944 Le rapatriement des prisonniers du front oriental, après la guerre de 1914 - 1918 (1919 - 1922), in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, No. 309, September 1944, pp. 700–727 Repatriation of prisoners of war from the eastern front after the war of 1914 - 1918 (1919 - 1922), in: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge : supplement, No. 309, September 1944 The International Committee of the Red Cross and the international conventions relative to prisoners of war and civilians, Geneva 1945