Everything about Jody Williams totally explained
Jody Williams (born
October 9,
1950 in
Brattleboro,
Vermont) is an
American teacher and aid worker who received the
1997 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the campaign she worked for, the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Williams first trained as a teacher of
English as a Second Language (ESL), receiving a BA from the
University of Vermont in 1972 and a Master's degree in teaching
Spanish and ESL from the
School for International Training (also in Vermont) in 1974. In 1984 she received a second M.A. in International Relations from the
School of Advanced International Studies at
Johns Hopkins University. She taught ESL in
Mexico, the
United Kingdom, and finally
Washington, D.C. before her first appointment in aid work, becoming a grocery worker of the "Nicaragua-Honduras Education Project" from 1984 to 1986. She then became deputy director of a
Los Angeles-based charity, "Medical Aid for El Salvador", a position which she held until 1992 when she took up her position with the newly formed ICBL.
The organization ultimately achieved its goal in 1997 when an international treaty (
Ottawa Treaty) banning antipersonnel
landmines was signed in
Ottawa in 1997 (though some nations, notably the
United States,
China and
Russia refrained).
One broader aspect of Williams' work was her pioneering use of People Power:
massively distributed collaboration in trans-national political action, initially via fax and eventually via email -- Williams' own explanation,
» Imagine trying to get hundreds of organizations – each one independent and working on many, many issues – to feel that each is a critical element of the development of a new movement. I wanted each to feel that what they'd to say about campaign planning, thinking, programs, actions was important. So, instead of sending letters, I’d send everyone faxes. People got in the habit of faxing back. This served two purposes – people would really have to think about what they were committing to doing before writing it down, and we've a permanent, written record of almost everything in the development of the campaign from day one. (External Link
)
Williams continues to serve the ICBL as a campaign
ambassador and editor of the organization's
landmine report, and, since 2003, has held a faculty position of distinguished
professor of
social work and global justice at the
University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work.
Within the landmine movement, Williams is a controversial figure. Many believe she was inappropriately awarded the Nobel and it should have been awarded to her boss at the time, Bobby Mueller of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. She has also drawn criticism for her brash style which is seen by many as counter productive, such as calling President Clinton a "weenie" while discussing his reluctance to sign off on the Ottawa treaty.
She was the Head of Mission of the High-Level Mission dispatched by the
Human Rights Council to report on the situation of human rights in Darfur and the needs of Sudan in this regard (established at the 4th special session of the Human Rights Council in decision S-4/101). The Mission issued its report on
7 March 2007.
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