| Arrangement | Material in this archive predominantly relates to Mary Robinson’s professional career, commencing with her time as barrister in the late 1960s to the acquisition of the collection by the University of Galway in 2018. It also includes some material relating to her family, and her own studies prior to working professionally. During her career Robinson has lived and worked in several locations including Ballina, County Mayo and Dublin City, Ireland as well as Geneva, Switzerland and New York City, United States of America. Material was stored in several locations and moved on numerous occasions and much of the pre-existing arrangement had been lost. As a result, an overall arrangement was imposed on the collection. This comprises three main sections totalling 19 series.
The bulk of the material can be found in the first section (series 1-9) which covers Robinson’s various roles, arranged in chronological order where possible based on the commencement date of the role in question. These include her work as barrister (P143/1); senator and legislator (P143/2); lecturer and chancellor (P143/3); President of Ireland (P143/4); United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and UN Special Envoys (P143/5); founder of Realizing Rights (P143/6); member and chair of The Elders (P143/7) and founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (P143/8). In some cases, Robinson held multiple roles simultaneously and certain overlaps occur. The final series of this section relates to the many organisations for which she was patron, honorary president or member of the board (P143/9).
The second section (series 10-17) covers material spanning the overall time-period of these roles and is more general in nature. Material in P143/10 relates to the many awards and honorary degrees received by Robinson. P143/11 relates to memoirs, biographies and other literary works relating to her work. The remaining five series in this section contain material relating to Events (P143/12); Correspondence (P143/13); Reports and Research (P143/14); Press (P143/15) and Personal Diaries and Agendas (P143/16) which either cannot be identified as relating to any one specific role or relate to multiple roles simultaneously.
Material in the final section (series 18 and 19) relates to Robinson’s husband Nicholas (P143/18), and to her wider family (P143/19). Nicholas Robinson is an Irish author, historian, solicitor and cartoonist who as the husband of Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland, became Ireland’s first First Gentleman. Material in that series relates to his work in these areas along with his work as a founder of the Irish Architectural Archive, and the Irish Landmark Trust.
Material continues to be added in regular accruals as per donor agreement.
Language: the material in this collection is predominantly in English, but also includes material in French, particularly pertaining to Robinson’s work with the United Nations, as well as small amount of material in Spanish, German, Irish among other languages. |
| Administrative History | Mary Robinson (née Bourke) was born in Ballina, County Mayo in 1944, to Aubrey de Vere Bourke (Ballina) and his wife Tessa (née O’Donnell, Carndonagh, Inishowen, County Donegal), both medical doctors. She was raised along with her four brothers, Oliver, Aubrey, Henry and Adrian, in Victoria House, Ballina, where her father ran his medical practice. It is now the location of the Mary Robinson Centre.
She attended Mount Anville, an exclusive Catholic girls’ boarding school in Dublin from the age of 10. She then spent a year in Paris attending a finishing school (1961-1962) before commencing Legal Studies [Law degree] in Trinity College Dublin (TCD). As the Catholic Church's ban on Catholics attending TCD was still in place at the time of her application, her parents had to first request permission from Archbishop John Charles McQuaid to allow her to attend. She was one of three women in her class, was elected a scholar in 1965 and graduated in 1967 with first class honours. She was the first female auditor of TCD Law Society – her 1967 inaugural address “Law and Morality” focussed on the special position of the Roman Catholic Church in the Irish constitution, and how laws were enforcing Catholic “morality” and equating “sin” with “crime”. She espoused the removal of prohibition on divorce, lifting the ban on the use of contraceptives, and decriminalising homosexuality and suicide. She furthered her studies at the King's Inns, Dublin and was called to the Irish Bar in 1967. She was awarded a fellowship to attend Harvard Law School, receiving a Master of Laws in 1968.
In 1969, aged 25, Robinson was appointed Reid Professor of Law at Trinity College, the youngest ever at the time, and held the position until 1975. From 1975-1990 she lectured in European Community Law. In 1970, she married Nicholas Robinson, a fellow law student at TCD and who was then practising as a solicitor. Together they have three children. In 1988 she established (with her husband) the Irish Centre for European Law at TCD.
Also in 1969, she was first elected to Seanad Éireann [Upper House of Parliament], becoming the youngest member to be elected. She served as a senator from 1969-1989 and was mainly concerned with issues relating to the separation of Catholic Church teaching from criminal law, including the ban on contraceptives, legalising homosexuality and changing the constitutional ban on divorce as well as securing the right for women to serve on juries. She was also involved in the “Save Wood Quay” campaign, an unsuccessful campaign to halt development by Dublin Corporation on a site of major archaeological significance. On 23 May 1989, Robinson announced that she would not be seeking re-election, and served her last day as senator on 5 July 1989.
Robinson joined the Labour Party, in July 1976, though she later resigned from the party in 1985 in protest at the signing of the Anglo-Irish agreement which she felt ignored Unionist objections. Whilst a member of the party, she twice ran for Dáil Éireann [Lower House of Parliament] in 1977 and 1981 but lost both races. She was also a member of the Dublin City Council (1979–83). In 1990 the Labour party approached her to consider running for the role of President of Ireland. She agreed but ran as an independent, nominated by the Labour Party and supported by the Green Party and the Workers’ Party.
Robinson won the election and was inaugurated as the seventh President of Ireland on 3 December 1990. She was the first female President of Ireland and was also the first non-Fianna Fáil candidate. Robinson used her expertise of constitutional law to redefine the role of the Presidency. She adopted a much more prominent role than her predecessors and did much to communicate a more modern image of Ireland. Strongly committed to human rights, she was the first head of state to visit Somalia after it suffered from civil war and famine in 1992 and the first to visit Rwanda after the genocide there in 1994.
In May 1993 Robinson became the first serving Irish president to visit the United Kingdom and meet Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. She later welcomed visits by other senior members of the British royal family to Áras an Uachtaráin [the official residence and principal workplace of the President of Ireland, in Dublin] including Charles, then Prince of Wales. Over the course of several visits to Northern Ireland as President she met politicians of all backgrounds including David Trimble [Ulster Unionist Party] and John Hume [Social Democratic and Labour Party] and controversially met and shook hands with Gerry Adams [Sinn Féin]. She also met with many local community groups and activists. She is thus credited with helping improve Anglo-Irish relations – The Good Friday Agreement was subsequently signed seven months after the end of her term [10 April 1998]. She also campaigned for gay rights, met with religious orders, improved awareness of human right issues worldwide and reached out to the Irish diaspora.
As President, she signed two significant bills that related to her previous work: a bill to fully liberalise the law on the availability of contraceptives; and a bill fully decriminalising homosexuality, and which unlike legislation in much of the world at the time, provided for a fully equal age of consent. In 1996, she also signed the legalisation of divorce into law. Robinson was an exceptionally popular president, and halfway through her term of office her popularity rating had reached an unprecedented 93%. She remains only the second Irish president who was eligible for but did not seek a second term.
Robinson resigned as President with the approval of Irish political parties shortly before her term was completed to take up the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) on September 12, 1997. She was headhunted by Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) specifically for the role. Her task was to set the human rights agenda within the organisation and internationally, refocusing its appeal and integrating human rights into all aspects of the UN. She became the first High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Tibet, campaigned against capital punishment in the United States of America (USA) and spoke out against the war on terror. She frequently held governments to account for their Human Rights records including Russia, China, USA and Israel.
Though she had initially announced her intention to serve a single four-year term, she extended the term by a year following an appeal from Annan, allowing her to preside over the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, as secretary-general. Controversially the US and Israel walked out ahead of the commencement of the conference, and Robinson was criticised for her handling of event. While she initially offered to continue for another three-year period, essentially completing a second four-year term, Robinson's period as High Commissioner ended in 2002, after sustained pressure from the United States led her to declare she was no longer able to continue her work. Her last day as UNHCHR was on 11 September 2002, the 1st anniversary of 9/11 [when four co-ordinated suicide terrorist attacks were carried out by the militant Islamist extremist network al-Qaeda against the USA]. She was succeeded by Sergio Vieira de Mello. [Archivist’s Note: In August 2003 he was killed in the Canal Hotel bombing, Baghdad along with 20 other UN staff members.]
After stepping down as UNHCHR, Robinson founded the nongovernmental organisation Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative (2002–10). Its central concerns included equitable international trade, access to health care, migration, women’s leadership, and corporate responsibility. The new entity assembled a small team with an understanding of the UN system, human rights, the foundation world, and fundraising and included the creation of a partnership agreement between three partners: The Aspen Institute in Washington DC; the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva, and Columbia University in New York City.
In 2007 Robinson was invited by anti-apartheid activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela to become a founding member of The Elders, an international non-governmental organisation of public figures, noted as senior statesmen and women, peace activists and human rights advocates, with a goal of contributing their wisdom to tackle some of the world's toughest problems. The group was initiated by English philanthropist Richard Branson and musician and human rights activist Peter Gabriel. Other members included Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Chair 2007-2013), Kofi Annan (Chair 2013-2018), Graça Machel and former US President, Jimmy Carter. On 1 November 2018, Robinson was appointed Chair of The Elders, succeeding Kofi Annan who had died earlier in the year.
In 2010, Robinson returned to Ireland and founded the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ), a centre for education and advocacy on sustainable and people-centred development in the world’s poorest communities. Based out of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), it came to a planned end in April 2019.
Between 2013 and 2016 Mary served as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy in three roles: first for the Great Lakes region of Africa, then on Climate Change and most recently as his Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate.
Robinson served as the twenty-fourth, and first female, chancellor of TCD from 1998-2019 and in 2019 was appointed Adjunct Professor of Climate Justice at the university.
She is the recipient of numerous honours and awards - in 2004 Amnesty International awarded her its Ambassador of Conscience award for her human rights work, and she later received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). She is a founding member of the Council of Women World Leaders, served as honorary president of Oxfam International, and is a member of Club of Madrid. She serves as Patron of the Board of the Institute of Human Rights and Business, is an Ambassador for The B Team, in addition to being a board member of several organisations and charities including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the Aurora Foundation. |