COVER STORY
From the frontline of war zones to high-level meetings with international leaders, UTAS graduate Alice Edwards will do whatever it takes to improve the lives of those living in the worst conditions
Human rights lawyer Alice Edwards
Expensive, cosmopolitan Geneva is a world away from the war zones and famine-ravaged countries Alice Edwards experienced in her early human rights career. And yet Switzerland’s secondlargest city, with its idyllic lake, luxury hotels and boutique-lined streets, is where decisions are made that directly affect the poorest of Earth’s inhabitants.
“There is an irony in being in an absolutely beautiful place – with a stunning lake and clean fresh air and a well-organised transport system and a functioning government – when your work focuses on other parts of the world, where all of those things are real challenges,” says Edwards, a Tasmanian lawyer who has lived in Geneva for seven years. “That disconnect gives you the space to be able to think about those things freely without the pressure and stresses of that other world. But, at the same time, it’s important to keep pinching yourself and remembering the reasons for the work that you do.”
Edwards, 44, recently made a flying visit to Hobart for a series of events organised in her honour by her alma mater, the University of Tasmania, to recognise a stellar career. The youngest woman ever to hold the position of chief legal adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Edwards also spent five years in the UK in teaching and research positions at Oxford University, the University of Nottingham and the London College of Law. She is now the UN’s Head of the Secretariat for the Convention against Torture Initiative.
TasWeekend catches up with Edwards between events in a hectic schedule that includes a gala award dinner and a public lecture streamed live around the country, before she flies back to Europe, via meetings in Africa. Despite what must be a difficult juggling act between university obligations, meeting with various politicians – including another UTAS law school alumnus, Premier Will Hodgman, and precious time with her parents and sisters in Hobart – Edwards is good humoured and generous with the time she has. She is clearly delighted to be back in her home town.
“I’m proudly Tasmanian,” Edwards says. “I always say I’m Tasmanian first, even when I’m in international meetings. Tasmania, for me, is distinctly different to what is known internationally about Australia.”
It seems right that Edwards introduces herself this way, given that foreigners must find it as hard to pinpoint her hybrid accent as it is to locate Tasmania on a world map. Hers is the measured, authoritative-but-pleasant voice of someone accustomed to getting her point across in myriad international settings, from meetings with hostile government leaders to hobnobbing at diplomatic cocktail events around the globe.
As Edwards tells it, she was sitting on one of Geneva’s famously efficient trams, her brow furrowed as she pondered the task of convincing recalcitrant countries to sign up to the UN’s human rights treaty on torture, when an email popped into her inbox about the UTAS award. The Foundation Graduate Award is presented to University of Tasmania graduates who have made a big contribution to society and shown exceptional professional achievement early in their careers.
This could not be more fitting than for Edwards, who started her humanitarian career as a volunteer communications officer in Mozambique and has gone on to shape the UN’s responses to refugees and victims of human trafficking. “It gave me this real boost [to receive the UTAS award],” she says. “It’s really nice to be acknowledged for the work you do but, more importantly, for the impact you can have.
“It’s a good opportunity to reflect and take stock because, if you don’t, the work can seem overwhelming, insurmountable and incredibly depressing.
“I had spent the past five years as the chief legal adviser to the High Commissioner for Refugees, which was an incredibly intense and amazing experience, but you realise the challenges are overwhelming – going into the office on a daily basis, trying to develop policies, reviewing government practices, trying to convince governments that there are other ways of doing things that are more humane and more constructive and would have longer-term benefits. Having acknowledgment of all of those efforts was really thrilling.”
The sense of purpose with which she left home for the first time at the age of 20 to travel around Africa after graduating with Honours in Law is typical Alice, according to her family. As her older sister Louissa Johnson describes it, Edwards went through Hobart’s Fahan School for girls with a small and particularly competitive cohort of peers. This could have been toxic for some girls, but not for Edwards, who was naturally ambitious and embraced the rivalry.
“That competitive environment made her strive harder, be more determined,” Johnson says. “I would describe her as ambitious, goal-setting, career-minded. She’s very intense and, once she sets her mind to something, she’ll follow through.”
Named sports prefect in her final year at Fahan, Edwards captained the athletics, swimming, hockey and softball teams. From 16, she played A-grade hockey for the University of Tasmania and she was selected for state teams in hockey and athletics, competing at national championships and breaking a number of state and independent school records in athletics.
“I was very serious about sport, and trained all the time,” she says. “Sport is in my genes.”
Johnson recalls her sister, six years her junior, recording her sporting achievements in a book then setting out her goals. Parents Jill and John were highly engaged with their three daughters’ sporting endeavours. They are all high achievers. Johnson is a physical education teacher turned corporate HR consultant. Middle-sister Skye is a former model and entrepreneur who started her first business at 19. She is responsible for a string of successful fashion and food companies in Launceston.
It is the baby of the family who causes them the most worry, Johnson says. “From Mum and Dad’s point of view, all they do is worry,” she says. “Alice was the baby of the family and also the last one to leave home. When she took up her first volunteer job in Mozambique, it was just worry for Mum and Dad.”
Although she did some volunteer work with the Red Cross in Hobart while at university, it was not until she witnessed firsthand the devastation caused by war and famine in Africa that Edwards set her mind to improving the lives of others – particularly women and children. This ambition has come at no small cost, both health-wise and in terms of love. Her marriage to a fellow Australian ended when it came down to a choice between moving back home with her husband and continuing her career with the UN, which meant living in Europe.
Edwards still suffers thyroid problems as a result of malaria and other illnesses contracted in Mozambique and, later, while working in Rwanda. “I can clearly remember when she came back the first time after a full 12 months in Africa and she did look very unwell, and she had the first of many of her sicknesses,” Johnson says.
After volunteering with Food for the Hungry International in Mozambique, Edwards returned to Australia to work at a corporate law firm. However, it was not long before she was drawn to the UNHCR. Asked to name the achievements of which she is most proud, Edwards points first to her two years in Bosnia during the war. “Women’s rights are central to the work that I do,” she says. “What happens in conflict zones is, through this chaos, there are a lot of people who take advantage. One of the main ways is economically, but [also] through exploitation.
“During the chaos and lack of governance in Bosnia, a lot of women were being trafficked through the region without any consequences. I was the focal point on refugee women and children at the time and these women were brought to my attention, but we didn’t have a way to frame their cases as refugee cases. I came up with legal arguments to suggest that victims of trafficking could be refugees. My approach was rejected by my bosses. They said no one’s going to accept as refugees trafficking victims from Romania and Poland and Hungary who have been subjected to extreme levels of violence, but in very different settings to refugees who were fleeing from conflict and persecution because of political and religious beliefs.
“I eventually convinced them, and now that view – that victims of trafficking can be refugees – is UNHCR policy. It has also been adopted by most of the major industrialised asylum countries in the world.”
Edwards is matter-of-fact about her achievements. “I was in the right place at the right time and there was an urgency to it,” she says.
Johnson recalls the psychological hardship this period caused her sister. “I was her lifeline when she was in Bosnia. She would often ring reverse charges,” Johnson says.
At one point, a bomb went off a couple of hundred metres down the road from Edwards’ base. Johnson says the danger, in some ways, seemed more frightening for her family safely back in Australia.