Professional Annie Sugier was born in
Courcelles-lès-Lens, a small town a short distance to the south of
Lille in the extreme north of
France. At that time Courcelles was still dominated by its coal mine. Her father worked as a chemical engineer: her mother was a nurse. She received her primary schooling in
Argentina and
Brazil, returning for her secondary schooling to
Europe where she attended schools in
Spain and
France. She received degrees in
Physics and
Chemistry at the
"Faculté des sciences d'Orsay", part of the
Paris-Saclay University. Sugier then embarked on a career as an industrial chemist, specialising in the reprocessing of
radioactive waste, employed as an engineer with the
CEA (in a division subsequently reconfigured, and now part of
Areva S.A.). She was then appointed to head up the research programmes on the treatment and care of
radioactive waste. In 1989 she took charge of the
CEA department responsible for the dismantling of nuclear installations, becoming the CEA's first female director. In 1992, she oversaw the integration of the
"Institute for Nuclear Protection and Safety" (which at that time was an institute under the umbrella of the
CEA, and which later, in 2002, was rebranded and relaunched as the now autonomous
"Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute" ("Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire" / IRSN). She held the post of "directrice déléguée à la radioprotection" (
loosely, "under-director for radioprotection"). She also held an advisory role on radioprotection in support of the
IRSN director general. Further recognition was reflected in her appointment by Health and Environment Ministers to presidency, in 1997, of the " Groupe Radioécologie Nord-Cotentin" (GRNC). The creation of this interdisciplinary expert group was a first in the world of nuclear sciences. It came in response to scientific disagreement triggered by an epidemiological study postulating a connection between emissions from the
La Hague reprocessing plant and a heightened incidence of
Leukaemia among young people in the surrounding neighbourhood. Numerous articles by specialists, sociologist and journalists covering related issues of risk management followed. Applying the same model, Sugier then accepted a request by Ministers of Health, Economics and Industry to set up a second interdisciplinary expert group to investigate
the old Uranium mines in Limousin (in south-central France), in order to assess their environmental impact. Within the still resolutely male-dominated
Ottawa-based
"International Commission on Radiological Protection" (ICRP) she became the first woman to be entrusted with the presidency of one of the technical committees: Committee 4, responsible for regulatory system applications. In this context Sugier took a leading role in producing a new set of
ICRP recommendations (Publication 60} and in the drafting of other more specialist publications on emergencies management and land contamination. She served two terms as a member of the "Scientific Council" at the
French parliamentary office for evaluation of scientific and technological choices, of the "Scientific Council" for the
Seine-Normandie region and of the influential
National Mines Academy. She also served two terms as president of the "Scientific Council" at the
"Centre d'étude sur l'évaluation de la protection dans le domaine nucléaire" (study centre for evaluation of nuclear protection) at
Fontenay-aux-Roses.
Activist During the 1970s Annie Sugier engaged with the
women's liberation movement. In 1974/75 she was a co-founder of the "Ligue du droit des femmes" (''"Women's rights league"''), together with
Simone de Beauvoir,
Vicky Colombet,
Anne Zelensky and
Annie Cohen. In 1978, with backing from
Simone Veil, Sugier opened the refuge for battered women at
Clichy. She has also taken a lead in combatting violence against young girls with immigrant backgrounds: issues on which she has campaigned include
excision,
forced expatriation and various classes of
"honour crime". A shared
colonial history had left several hundred thousand
Algerians in France, many of whom came from families that had
ended the
Algerian War on the "wrong" side. During the 1980s a succession of cases came to the fore in which, following marital ructions, fathers with Algerian connections had removed their children to
Algeria, in defiance of French court rulings granting custody of the children in question to their mothers remaining in France. In an effort to provide a remedy for these cases, in August 1986 the governments of
France and
Algeria signed a convention, but a view quickly emerged that this had failed to provide an effective remedy. Under Sugier's leadership, the LDIF played a major role in highlighting the issues. A particular atrocity in point was the
"Sohane affair", which came up in 2002. The trial evidently took some time to prepare, but when it was held, between 31 March and 7 April 2007, the killer and his accomplice were both found guilty. The killer received a 25-year jail sentence while the accomplice was sentenced to 8 years. The accomplice now made the tactical error of lodging an appeal. The LDIF legal team seized the opportunity and lodged their own appeal. The LDIF was represented at the trial by
Linda Weil-Curiel, a lawyer with a reputation in the field of women's rights: Sugier and Weil-Curiel had made their important first visit to the dead girl's sister and father together. Throughout the trial Weil-Cureil had emphasized the sexist aspect of the case, and the
advocate general clearly took full cognisance of her submissions. The LDIF was represented not in respect of the criminal aspects of the matter but as a civil litigant: on 18 September 2006 the court responsible for the civil aspect of the case accepted that the LDIF intervention was "admissible and well founded". The appeal in respect of the accomplice was heard at the
Seine-Saint-Denis Court of Assizes between 8 June and 14 June 2007; a ten-year jail term was substituted for the earlier, lesser sentence. After the verdict, Annie Sugier produced a rapid succession of statements and articles celebrating the fact that for the first time, under pressure from the LIDF's involvement in the case,
a court in France had been persuaded to respond to the acts of torture and barbarism of which Sohane Benziane was the victim, to acknowledge the concept of "a sexist crime". Annie Sugier is a member of the
Socialist Party. She regularly contributes to
Libération,
Le Monde, and the political journal
Riposte Laïque. She formally broke with the Riposte Laïque movement in 2012. The best known of Annie Sugier's other feminist campaigns involves sport: more specifically the
Olympic Games. In 1995 she joined with others to set up the so-called "Atlanta+ Committee", in order to draw attention to and denounce sexual apartheid and discrimination against sportswomen more broadly. In 2012 she published "Femmes voilées aux Jeux olympiques" (
"Veiled Women at the Olympic Games") which covered more than twenty years of "Atlanta+ Committee" campaigning. Timed to coincide with the
2012 Summer Olympics, "Londres 2012: Justice pour les femmes" (
"London 2012: Justice for the women") was published under her direction and that of Linda Weil-Curiel. That was followed four years later by "Appliquez la Charte olympique" (
"Follow the Olympic Charter"), timed to coincide with the
2016 Summer Olympics. The campaigning continues in respect of the
2024 Summer Olympics scheduled for
Paris. Annie Sugier was a jury member for the
Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women's Liberation. She is a member of the :fr:Coordination française pour le lobby européen des femmes |"French co-ordination [organisation] for the European Women's Lobby" (
"Coordination française pour le lobby européen des femmes"/ CLEF) and of the "Movement for Peace and against Terrorism" (
"Mouvement pour la paix et contre le terrorisme" / MPCT). Both enquiries were followed by substantive pieces of legislation. == Celebration and recognition ==