View source for Goler T. Butcher

{{short description|American lawyer}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Goler T. Butcher
| image              = GolerTButcher1963.png
| alt                = An African-American woman with dark hair side parted, dressed in loose waves to chin length; wearing a floral top or dress
| caption            = Goler T. Butcher, from a 1963 publication of the US Department of State
| birth_date         = 13 July 1925
| birth_place        = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
| death_date         = June 9, 1993
| death_place        = Washington, D.C.
| occupation         = Lawyer, government official, college professor
}}
'''Goler Teal Butcher''' (July 13, 1925 – June 9, 1993) was a [[lawyer]], [[scholar]], [[advocate]], and [[professor]] in the field of [[international law]].
==Early life and education==
Butcher was born in [[Philadelphia|Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]. She graduated from the [[University of Pennsylvania]], with a [[Bachelor of Arts|BA]] in 1946. She was a member of [[Phi Beta Kappa]] at Penn. She earned law degrees at [[Howard University School of Law]] in 1957, and an LLM at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958, with a thesis titled "The Choice of Law Rules Applied to International Sales Transactions". At Howard she was editor-in-chief of the school's law review''.''<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|date=December 1965|title=She Earned Law Degrees While Rearing Four Children|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_state-magazine_1963-12_32/page/49/mode/1up|journal=Department of State News Letter|pages=49|via=Internet Archive}}</ref>
==Career==
Butcher's long term teaching post was at Howard University School of Law, where she created the Goler Teal Butcher Award to attract students in international law to the university.
Butcher's public work began in 1963 as attorney at the Office of the Legal Advisor, [[Department of State]]. From 1971-1974, she was a consultant to the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Africa.<ref name=SlimPast>{{cite journal|title=Women in Government: A Slim Past, But a Strong Future|journal=Ebony|date=August 1977|pages=89–92, 96–98}}</ref>  She also served as Assistant Administrator for Africa, [[Agency for International Development]] under the [[Jimmy Carter|Carter]] Administration, and head of the [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] Transition Team for the Agency of International Development in 1992.
At the forefront of Butcher's human rights advocacy was her passion for ending global hunger and apartheid in South Africa. Butcher's advocacy of the right to freedom from hunger, specifically "starvation, chronic hunger, malnutrition," always followed by encouraging the privileged world to act on their duty to help in ending hunger.<ref>Goler Teal Butcher, Symposium: World Food Day Food and Law Conference: the Legal Faces of the Hunger Problem 30 How. L.J. 193, 193-94 (1987).</ref>   She recognized "[h]unger is not a mere matter of geography or of distribution of food. It relates to powerlessness, financial, economic and political powerlessness of individuals and social classes within nations and within the international community."<ref>Goler Teal Butcher, Symposium: World Food Day Food and Law Conference: the Legal Faces of the Hunger Problem 30 How. L.J. 193, 194 (1987).</ref>
'''Butcher's Approach to Ending Global Hunger'''
Butcher believed that there were two approaches to solving the problem of global hunger, a short-term and long-term approach.  The short-term approach is providing food to hungry people and the long-term approach is aiding the country to produce and develop its own food and move towards changing terms of trade.<ref name="Goler Teal Butcher 1987">Goler Teal Butcher, Symposium: World Food Day Food and Law Conference: the Legal Faces of the Hunger Problem: FOREWORD : The Relationship of Law to the Hunger Problem 30 How. L.J. 193, 200 (1987).</ref>   With regard to the long-term approach, Butcher promoted the idea that there is an affirmative duty on the richer or donor countries, "to adjust -- insofar as congruent with the needs of their own countries -- the terms of trade so that they are equitable and permit the countries where large groups of hungry peoples exist to have the necessary funds (a) to buy both food and the technological assistance, training and various inputs necessary for them to produce food themselves and (b) to be able to have the financial resources to move forward in their development efforts."<ref name="Goler Teal Butcher 1987"/>  The negative duty on donor countries is for them to exclude their agricultural sectors from international negotiations and trade liberalization because of the negative effects of industrialized countries dumping of food surpluses on developing countries, the effect on prices for agricultural products and on country imports.<ref>Goler Teal Butcher, Symposium: World Food Day Food and Law Conference: the Legal Faces of the Hunger Problem: FOREWORD : The Relationship of Law to the Hunger Problem 30 How. L.J. 193, 200-01 (1987).</ref>
In addition to the duty on the donor countries, the developing countries also have a duty to "establish new laws, amend existing laws, adapt the administrative and regulatory machinery of the state to effectuate the desired economic and development programs, to implement the priorities of the government generally and with respect to agriculture pricing and marketing patterns, the agriculture sector, foreign exchange rates, both as to food and cash crops through budgetary allocations and national investment policies."<ref>Goler Teal Butcher, Symposium: World Food Day Food and Law Conference: the Legal Faces of the Hunger Problem: FOREWORD : The Relationship of Law to the Hunger Problem 30 How. L.J. 193, 201 (1987).</ref>
'''Butcher's Influence on the United States Foreign Policy on Global Hunger'''
In 1977, Butcher became the first black woman to hold the position of assistant administrator to AID Africa.<ref name="Clay Smith 1994">Clay Smith, Tribute: United States Foreign Policy and Goler Teal Butcher, 37 How. L.J. 139, 160 (1994).</ref>  One of Butcher's "first actions upon becoming assistant administrator for Africa, was to examine the steps AID had taken in the past to provide opportunity for entities owned, managed or principally identified with minorities and women to serve in its program as contractors and grantees…" <ref>See Minority and Small Business Contracting Policies of the Agency for International Development's Africa Bureau: Hearing Before the Subcomm. On Africa of the House of Comm. on International Relations, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 53, 31-32 (1977).</ref>  In her new position, Butcher testified before Congress in hearings dealing with the inadequacy of small business contracting policies in the Africa Bureau due to contracting barriers constructed during the Ford administration.<ref name="Clay Smith 1994"/>  Butcher believed that AID had a responsibility "to assure that contractors exercise equal opportunity employment," <ref name="Africa Bureau 1977">See Minority and Small Business Contracting Policies of the Agency for International Development's Africa Bureau: Hearing Before the Subcomm. On Africa of the House of Comm. on International Relations, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 53, at 35 (1977).</ref> and this responsibility had been "virtually ignored."<ref name="Africa Bureau 1977"/>   "In addition to compliance with existing law and contracting regulations, Butcher proposed several new initiatives, one of which established the Minority Involvement Office in the Africa Bureau."<ref>See Minority and Small Business Contracting Policies of the Agency for International Development's Africa Bureau: Hearing Before the Subcomm. On Africa of the House of Comm. on International Relations, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 53, at 39 (1977).</ref>
Later that year, "Butcher returned to Congress to explain why the U.S. should be more responsive to Africa's development."<ref name="Clay Smith 1994"/>  Butcher called Africa "the stepchildren of our foreign assistance program" and informed Congress of the minimizing AID assistance since 1962, but was encouraged by the "current $155 million in development assistance."<ref>Goler T. Butcher, Toward A More Responsive AID Policy for Africa: Hearing Before the Subcomm. On Africa of the House Comm. on International Relations, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 3, 2 (1977).</ref>   During her address, Butcher outlined initiatives to "overcome hunger and malnutrition…[to train] personnel in agricultural skills… [to construct] the rural infrastructure necessary for delivery of inputs and information and the outward movement of produce… [to assist] in the development of educational systems [and to give] greater attention to the geographical allocation of our assistance in terms of common or interrelated problems among the countries of the continent…" <ref>Goler T. Butcher, Toward A More Responsive AID Policy for Africa: Hearing Before the Subcomm. On Africa of the House Comm. on International Relations, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 3, at 3.</ref>
Each fiscal year Butcher would "map out her imaginative programs and her vision of enlarging the role of AID in assistance programs in Africa" to the House Subcommittee.   In 1979, Butcher noted that Africa was lagging "behind…the rest of the countries in the developing world."<ref>Clay Smith, Tribute: United States Foreign Policy and Goler Teal Butcher, 37 How. L.J. 139, 166-67 (1994).</ref>  She attributed this lag to the geographical isolation of Africa and the shortage of trained manpower, an area AID Africa specifically targeted.<ref>Clay Smith, Tribute: United States Foreign Policy and Goler Teal Butcher, 37 How. L.J. 139, 167.</ref>  In order to avoid falling on deaf ears after her frequent testimonials, Butcher would tie U.S. incentives into reasons why the U.S. should focus on supporting Africa's development programs.  Specifically, Butcher pointed out Africa possesses "substantial[ly] confirmed or highly probable deposits of important minerals."  <ref>Goler T. Butcher, Fiscal Year 1980 International Security Assistance Authorization: Hearings on S.584 Before the Senate Comm. on Foreign Relations, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. 169 (1979).</ref>
==Volunteer positions==
Among her volunteer positions, Butcher was:
*board member - [[Amnesty International]]
*honorary vice-president - [[American Society of International Law]]
*member - Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law
*member - International Human Rights Law Group
*member - [[Council on Foreign Relations]] (1992)
==Personal life and legacy==
Goler Teal married George Hench Butcher Jr., a mathematics professor at Howard University. They had four children.<ref name=":0"/> Goler T. Butcher died after a fatal [[Myocardial infarction|heart attack]] in 1993, aged 67 years, in Washington, D.C.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Pearson|first=Richard|date=1993-06-13|title=Goler Butcher Dies|language=en-US|newspaper=Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/06/13/goler-butcher-dies/60c3dabf-2f4f-40ba-bcc7-c3dbd9f4e1b1/|access-date=2022-01-14|issn=0190-8286}}</ref> The Howard University's Goler Teal Butcher International Moot Court Team [https://web.archive.org/web/20060901162359/http://www.law.howard.edu/248] honors her name. The American Society of International Law created the Goler T. Butcher Medal in her honor, awarded since 1997 to leading people in international law.
==References==
<references />
== External links ==
*[http://iipsj.com/SDJ/Committees/GTBAwardComm.htm Goler Teal Butcher Award] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130114063031/http://iipsj.com/SDJ/Committees/GTBAwardComm.htm |date=2013-01-14 }}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070213205239/https://www.asil.org/aboutasil/asilawards.html American Society of International Law awards and honours]
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[[Category:1925 births]]
[[Category:American human rights activists]]
[[Category:American legal scholars]]
[[Category:1993 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American lawyers]]