Mary Robinson Space

Mary Robinson (born in 1944) is an Irish lawyer, academic, politician and diplomat, the first woman to serve as President of Ireland and a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College Dublin at the age of 25, she also taught other subjects there, including constitutional law and European Community law. In 1988, she founded the Irish Centre for European Law. A renowned lawyer and ardent defender of human rights, she was elected to the Royal Academy of Ireland. In the political arena, she served in the Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate) for twenty years and, in 1990, became Ireland’s first female President. In those roles, she championed fundamental rights and gender equality, notably supporting the liberalisation of access to contraceptives, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the legalisation of divorce. Appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1997, she worked to protect human rights, particularly in conflict zones. She subsequently became a founding member of ‘The Elders’, a group of internationally renowned former political leaders committed to peace and human rights. Today, she continues to play an active role, in particular in the fight against climate change.