Helvi Sipilä (1915-2009) was a Finnish lawyer, an advocate of women’s rights, whose achievements have remained largely unexplored. She held important positions in the UN as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, its Rapporteur on family planning, and as chair of the Third Committee of the General Assembly. She took part in drafting of and steering the UN Declaration against Discrimination of Women, which later formed the basis for a legal convention, and solidified family planning as women’s right, expanding the reproductive rights of women. She became in 1972 the first female Assistant Secretary-General of the UN,.and was in charge of the International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City in 1975. It was the first UN conference focusing on women, a turning point in enlarging and consolidating a broader international regime for women. Criticising the dominance of economistic approach in the UN, Sipilä advocated an international human and social order, based on a women-centric world view.
Raimo Lintonen is a retired former researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Helsinki, Department of Strategic Studies of the National Defence University, and the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA).