Joan Russow

For the 2009 Conference on Climate change in Copenhagen, she submitted a document co-written with Rickard Levicki of England to the state negotiators.

In March 2008, at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, she collaborated on a paper related to the delegitimization of war; this paper was officially sanctioned for distribution to state delegations at the UN.

On August 4, 2008, in Victoria she presented a representative of Stephen Harper with a paper entitled 95 Articles of Condemnation of the Harper Government.

In 2008, Russow was involved in a film project related to Co-operatives titled Counterpoint to Corporatism.

Russow is a co-founder of the Ecological Rights Association and the Global Compliance Research Project. In September 2007, she collaborated on a declaration related to climate change. This declaration called upon the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to calculate the contribution of militarism to greenhouse gas emissions.

In March 2007, Russow lobbied state delegations in the UN General Assembly to invoke Article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations to set up an international tribunal to try the Bush administration. On March 8, 2007, the petition, in the six official languages, was submitted to the office of the President of the UN General Assembly.

Russow was the partner of David Scott White, the former chair of the Green Party of British Columbia, until his death in 2006. White was the manager of Russow's election campaign as leader of the federal Green party.

In 2005 Russow criticized the Green Party under Jim Harris for moving away from some of its original left-wing principles.

Russow developed a "Common Security Index" which was submitted to the Senate Committee on the Anti-Terrorism Act on October 17, 2005. To further common security, the member states of the United Nations have made commitments to work toward the following goals:

In the 2001 Quebec City protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Russow was detained for taking a photograph of the jail that was being emptied to incarcerate the FTAA protesters. Russow promoted the Green Party as a leader in the anti-globalization movement, in particular the anti-corporatist and pro-peace movement.

Russow and White left the Green Party in 2001, partly due to the German Green party's support of the NATO attack on Serbia. Russow and White both joined the NDP in 2003 and White continued his work as an activist until his death, most recently researching and writing against Canada's military role in Afghanistan.

Russow joined the Green Party in 1993 and became leader in 1997. She ran for a seat in the House of Commons of Canada in three federal elections; in Victoria in 1997 and 2000, and in Okanagan—Coquihalla in a by-election in September 2000. She lost all three elections.

Russow first gained attention in the "Lord's Prayer Case" which resulted in the banning of school prayer in public schools in British Columbia in 1989.

Joan Elizabeth Russow (born Ottawa, November 1, 1938) is a Canadian peace activist and former national leader of the Green Party of Canada from 1997 to 2001. She is also a co-founder of the Ecological Rights Association and the Global Compliance Research Project.