Gabrielle Radziwill


Princess Gabrielle Jeanne Anne Marie Radziwill was a Lithuanian nurse, pacifist and women's rights activist. She was one of first women to join the League of Nations where she was active from 1920 to 1934.
Before joining the Secretariat of the League of Nations in November 1920, Radziwill had spent two years working for the Russian Red Cross on the Russian-Persian front where she was in charge of hospitals. Active in women's organizations, in the League she was a strong supporter of women's interests, calling for cooperation with the women's movement. In connection with relationships between the League and women's societies, she stressed: "I shall always be ready to do what I can to help and further the aims of the women's organizations — even when I do not see eye to eye with them!"
In the League of Nations, she was initially employed as a Senior Assistant in the Information Section but was promoted to Member of Section in 1927. In 1931, she was transferred to the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section and, in 1934, to the Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux Section where she worked until she left in December 1938.
Speaking at the International Council of Women congress in 1925, Radziwill announced that the "League needs the work of women, and we women need the League of Nations' help, because the work that we are doing can only bear fruit if it is really sanctioned by our Governments and we women must help this sanction to be given."