Paula Escarameia

Paula Ventura de Carvalho Escarameia’s legacy extends beyond classical legal achievements. As a mentor and advocate of a new vision of the public international order, she inspired the next generation of legal minds. With a diversified career over decades that got cut short way too soon at the age of fifty, she’s earned global acclaim for her expertise in public international law, especially concerning the situation in East Timor. She was also the first woman and the first Portuguese person to join the United Nations International Law Commission in 2002 and a tireless defender of human and women’s rights with extraordinary precision, dedication, and unwavering commitment to justice. She believed that public international law was no rigid construct but could and should be changed especially in the areas of self-determination and the protection of human rights – ultimately contributing to the establishment of the International Criminal Court.¹⁾

“I have faith in a future where there will be a more equitable distribution, and where people will take more pleasure in contributing to a better world […] than in buying a fur coat or a luxury car they don’t need.”²⁾

From “Queen of Portugal” to lawyer

Paula Escarameia was born on 1 June 1960, in Lisbon, Portugal. She attended the British School of Lisbon, where she demonstrated exceptional skills in Portuguese and mathematics. Engaging in gymnastics from a young age, she wanted to become an Olympic medalist or alternatively the “Queen of Portugal”.³⁾

CC: Women´s Initiatives for Gender Justice

However, young Paula Escarameia graduated from high school and had to prepare herself for university. Since her father and several other family members had studied civil engineering themselves, she would pursue the same path.⁴⁾ But those plans were changed. During the revolutionary years of 1974 and 1976 in Portugal, which resulted in the Portuguese transition to democracy and the end of the Portuguese Colonial War⁵⁾, hardly any classes were being held, grades and homework had been abolished, and the students were all on the streets, demonstrating.

Those circumstances made Paula Escarameia, despite not being religious, turn to the only university in Lisbon that was still operating at that time: the Catholic University in Lisbon. Because the university did not offer any engineering classes, Paula Escarameia chose to study law. In 1983, she graduated with distinction, becoming the first and only lawyer in her family.⁶⁾

Later, she continued studying at the Bologna campus of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University (1984). Only then did Paula Escarameia specialize in international law. She did her Master’s (1986) and Doctorate (1988) at Harvard Law School, where she was the first Portuguese doctoral student.

Her interest in East Timor

Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975 was the result of different geopolitical strategies of Indonesia, Portugal, East Timor, Australia, the United States, and the United Nations. They all wanted stability and peace for East Timor, but they each interpreted the region’s needs differently. In the political vacuum left behind by Portugal’s colonialization (1586 – 1975), the conflicting views on how to achieve this stability rapidly led to a civil war, followed by a state-on-state conflict between the newly independent East Timorese and their powerful Indonesian neighbors.⁷⁾

When Timorese refugees came to Lisbon to find security, Paula Escarameia’s interest in East Timor and public international law was triggered. “Their eyes were so frightened all the time”, she recalled, emphasizing the profound impression it had left on her.⁸⁾ She later did research on the situation of East Timor to understand where the fear in those people came from. After her diploma in international relations in Bologna, she wrote both her Master´s and Ph.D. theses on that topic, although some of the professors Escarameia approached at Harvard Law School were not interested in the subject at all. This, however, just made her all the more determined to pursue it.⁹⁾ Her Doctoral thesis was entitled “Formation of Concepts in International Law: Subsumption under Self-Determination in the Case of East Timor” (1988).

In 1991, Escarameia founded the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor, an academic NGO with the purpose of promoting conferences and publications on Timor and influencing governments to accept its self-determination.¹⁰⁾ In 1992, the Portuguese Parliament awarded her the National Prize for her work on East Timor.¹¹⁾

Teaching as a political act

But not only research and practice filled Paula Escarameia´s heart. She also had been teaching courses on international law since 1984. She always wanted to teach since her mother was a schoolteacher and her grandfather was a teacher who also wrote books on early education.¹²⁾ Paula Escarameia wanted to transmit to others what she had learned, to work with young people at a time in their lives when “almost all dreams were possible”.¹³⁾ She said that teaching gave her the freedom to think, to articulate her thoughts and to write about them. But most importantly, she wanted to teach to awaken a “reflexive, analytical and critical spirit” in her students.¹⁴⁾ In 1989, Escarameia became Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Portuguese Catholic University. At the same time, she also served as adjunct to the Secretary of State for Education, drafting several reforms and laws on the reorganization of the Education Ministry.¹⁵⁾

After a disagreement with the Faculty of Law in Lisbon in the academic year of 1989-1990, Paula Escarameia spent the academic year of 1990-1991 teaching public international law at the University of Macau (prior named as University of East Asia), as part of a mission to train local judges, prosecutors and lawyers to administer the country’s judicial system.¹⁶⁾ She was the first female professor to be hired by the Macau Foundation and initially offered a professorship for three years, which she requested to terminate in the academic year of 1990-1991 due to the situation and prevailing corruption in China. Although previously being warned by other professors and colleagues, she still wanted to experience the situation for herself. However, she was later heavily criticized and struggled privately and did never open up to it. Macau’s reality in the context of international law was different to what she expected: in the hierarchy of Chinese norms, international treaties were subordinate not only to the Constitution – which was still extremely common in most legal systems – but also to political declarations. Sadly, this teaching experience was not as inspiring as she initially expected. She had to realize that there were far too few financial resources left for education; there was not even enough literature available for the faculty of law which would have been required to teach and learn properly.

After returning to Portugal, Paula Escarameia was appointed Director of the Center for International Institutions Studies in 1992, followed by Associate Professorship, at the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISCSP), the Technical University of Lisbon.¹⁷⁾ Since 1993, she was also teaching international law at the Superior Institute for Naval Warfare in Lisbon (a course for selection of Portuguese War Navy admirals and Air Force generals).¹⁸⁾ In 2003, she taught at the Law Faculty of the New University of Lisbon as well.¹⁹⁾

A visionary of international law

The protection of human dignity, human rights and the people´s right to self-determination were Escarameia’s key subjects which she addressed in her book “Que Direito Internacional Público Temos nos Nossos Dias?” (“Which public international law do we have nowadays?”²⁰⁾). She presented her vision of self-determination at the UN and advocated for the need to revise the Charter in order to maximize the protection of human rights through international criminal law.²¹⁾

But Paula Escarameia did not only share her ideas, she also worked directly for the UN. From 1995 to 1998, she was as legal counsellor at the permanent mission of Portugal to the UN, where she represented Portugal in the General Assembly’s Sixth Committee. She headed the Portuguese delegation to several special committees as well as to ad hoc and Preparatory Committees for the Establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).²²⁾

From 1999 to 2002, she returned to New York as a member of the Portuguese delegation to the Preparatory Commission for the ICC.²³⁾ She wrote numerous books and articles²⁴⁾ examining the competencies of the ICC and the Security Council on aggression²⁵⁾ and advocating for the incorporation of a mechanism into the Charter to address international criminal responsibility, whether committed by individuals or States. According to Escarameia, this was necessary because the Charter was silent on the issue concerning international criminal responsibility of individuals and even failed to address responsibility for the crime of aggression.

And she was successful: Her work contributed to the creation of the ICC in 2002 – the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The ICC Statute was considered innovative in several thematic areas, with special emphasis on violence against women.²⁶⁾

In November 2001, Paula Escarameia was one of the first two women ever to be elected to the International Law Commission (the other female Commissioner being Xue Hanqin from China, who later became judge at the International Court of Justice and is portrayed in our first edition of the calendar). She was also a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and an honorary member of the Portuguese Association of Women Lawyers, as well as the first ever Portuguese representative to this UN body. Four years later she was re-elected to the International Law Commission for a period that would last until 2011; a position she could not complete due to her early death in 2010.

Further Readings:

• Formation of Concepts in International Law: Subsumption under Self-Determination in the Case of East Timor. Harvard, USA, 1988 (Doctoral thesis). Fundação Oriente, Lisboa, 1993
• Colectânea de Jurisprudência de Direito Internacional (Collection of Jurisprudence of International Law). Almedina Editora, Coimbra, 1992
• Colectânea de Leis de Direito Internacional (Collection of Laws of International Law). ISCSP, Lisbon, 1994, 1998, 2003
• Exames de Direito Internacional Público (Exams of Public International Law). Lex, Lisbon, 1995
• Reflexões sobre Temas de Direito Internacional Público: Timor, a ONU e o Tribunal Penal Internacional (Reflections on Themes of Public International Law: Timor, the UN and the International Criminal Court). ISCSP, Lisbon, 2001
• O Direito Internacional no Início do Século XXI (Public International Law at the Beginning of the 21st Century). Almedina Editora, Coimbra, 2003

Further Sources:

• Interview “Na China os tratados internacionais são inferiores às declarações políticas”: https://odireitoonline.com/na-china-os-tratados-internacionais-sao-inferiores-as-declaracoes-politicas.html