Displacement as lived experience. Refugee relief and female leadership in the life and work of Toni Sender (1888–1964)
2025-06-27
This article discusses the German-Jewish politician Toni Sender (1888–1964) as a female leader within the international governance of refugee issues during the second post-war period. The contribution challenges the traditional androcentric view of the post-war refugee regime and leadership composed of European(-Jewish) men. It highlights Sender’s lived refugee experience and her role as a female expert within international organizations such as UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and at the Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the 1951 Refugee Convention, considering its gendered and political context. By drawing on primary sources, including Sender’s autobiography and diaries, documents from the UNHCR archives and reports by UNRRA that offer important insights into contemporary refugee governance, the article argues that Sender’s humanitarian leadership was shaped by her identity as a former refugee, a Jewish woman, and a socialist, who conceived refugee relief and law as forms of corrective justice and important preconditions for peaceful societies based on equal rights.