Report on the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women

With these inspiring words from Simone de Beauvoir, the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women opened in Brussels, Belgium. Over 2,000 women from forty countries participated in this event which took place at the Palais des Congres from March 4-8, 1976, ending on International Women's Day. In contrast to the International Women's Year (IWY) Conference in Mexico City (June-July, 1975), it was a feminist event. Organized by feminists active in the women's movement, rather than by governments or establishment institutions, the Tribunal was a conference of ordinary women, not leaders or stars--women of all ages and backgrounds, though most of them were of moderate means. The focus was entirely on the oppression of women. Furthermore, as Simone de Beauvoir pointed out, women attending the Tribunal came to denounce the crimes perpetrated against us by the male-dominated nations in which we all live, and to develop strategies to combat them. The idea of having an International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women was conceived at Femj (an international feminist camp in Denmark) i'n August, 1974 as a feminist response to the U.N.-declared International Women's Year. The Tribunal was born at a workshop of the International Feminist Conference held in Frankfurt in November, 1974, and attended by over 600 women. It was further developed at an international planning meeting in Paris where the Coordinating Committee was formed.1