From the villages of Afghanistan and the refugee camps of Darfur, to the labyrinthine corridors of the United Nations and the European commission, Jo Cox took on injustice and suffering with the same sense of urgency and optimism that would drive her work in parliament.
Testimony from colleagues who worked with the murdered MP in the charitable sector suggests how a decade grappling with some of the world’s most intractable conflicts and most severe poverty shaped her commitment to humanitarian ideals and honed her personal and political skills.
Petite, charismatic, impatient for change, her brilliant work as an advocate for some of the most vulnerable people in the world was underpinned by her ability to connect across divides of culture, wealth and politics.
“She was passionate, and her agenda was straightforward – there is injustice in this world and we need to sort it,” said Emily Jones, now associate professor of public policy at the University of Oxford and a former member of Cox’s team. “She had a sense of urgency but also respect for others.”
Cox began her aid career in Brussels, where she was hired for her impressive ability to negotiate the notoriously byzantine European commission. Her job was not the traditional aid business of delivering food, shelter and other help to those in need, but trying to shift laws and trade regulations tipped against the poor.
Guided by sharp political instincts, Cox helped make trade rules fairer for farmers in the developing world and life-saving medicines more accessible to HIV/Aids patients in poor countries, said Céline Charveriat, a colleague from those first days at Oxfam, who is now executive director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy.
It also provided a long lesson in how difficult the path she had chosen could be. “We were learning what it takes to change things, but also that very often you lose when you are an advocate. And that is always very hard to take, because [when you fail] you think, ‘If only I had worked harder, or been smarter, then maybe …’,” said Charveriat.
She remembered one day when the normally unflappable Cox broke down, daunted by the scale of their work. “She said, ‘I can’t take it any more, there is so much to do. And however hard I try, it’s just not good enough’.”
If she sometimes doubted herself, Cox managed the rare feat in an industry rife with cynicism of never doubting in the possibility of change, and the urgent need for it.
“She had a capacity to continue to be horrified by things, when other people would just start to think, ‘It’s a bad world and these things happen’ and be a bit more cynical about it,” said Kate Norgrove, a former colleague who now works for WaterAid.
That optimism fed into practical urgency, not blind idealism. She focused charm, intellect, political skills and persistence on winning practical changes, even in the most challenging situations. A tendency to sometimes underestimate her was just another weapon in Cox’s arsenal.
“Because she was so petite, and so nice and friendly, they would have no idea what was going to happen to them,” Norgrove said, remembering meetings with unsuspecting politicians.
From Brussels, Cox moved to Oxfam’s headquarters in Oxford as a leader of its lobbying team, and began spending more time travelling around the world to crisis spots and international meetings, from Gaza to Pakistan, Chad to Brazil.
Equally charming in a presidential palace or a village home, she always listened to people she was working with and for, remembers Constantino Casasbuenas, a Colombian colleague. “She had the capacity to recognise to herself that she was ignorant on many different issues and listen very well to other people,” said Casasbuenas. “That is difficult and it means being humble, in the sense you have a good education, a good training, but it doesn’t mean that you know everything. That gave her the ability to lead the team.”
Nicole Widdersheim flew to Kabul with Cox in 2008, when she was campaigning to protect civilians caught up in conflict. It was a cause that would be at the heart of her mission in parliament nearly a decade later, as a passionate advocate for Syrians trapped by fighting and trying to flee it.
As ever, Cox was pragmatic but forceful, focusing on international laws that provide strong safeguards for the non-combatants, but are so often ignored. “We knew we weren’t going to stop the war in Afghanistan, but if it was going to be fought we wanted parties to the conflict to respect these laws,” said Widdersheim, now senior adviser for human rights and atrocity prevention for USAid. Cox was physically fearless, even as the war was escalating, determined to meet the families being torn apart by conflict. “We sat on the ground and talked about farming, but usually everything would slip towards war, how many sons people had lost in the war,” said Widdersheim.
Cox was also incredibly driven, with a sense of urgency that could frustrate colleagues trying to pick slowly through the complexities of war and crisis zones for ways they could help. “She had – whether it was artlessness or extreme sophistication – a clear-sighted vision that if there is a problem there must be a solution,” said Sophia Swithern, a former colleague who is now head of research at Development Initiatives.
Cox’s commitment to a better world ran from the communities she was fighting for overseas, to the teams she was working with at home. She was a particular champion of other women in the workplace, mentoring and supporting them as she rose herself, Norgrove said. Working for women was at the heart of her professional life in every way; after leaving Oxfam she spent several years on a campaign to improve maternal mortality.
But what endeared her to friends and colleagues as much as her brilliant campaigning, thoughtful mentoring and incisive mind, was a sense of fun more than matching her sense of commitment.
Just before her death, she had sent out invitations to an annual summer solstice party deep in the countryside, at a cottage with no electricity or running water, but promising lots of love and fun.
It was a change in dress code from the East Village bars that Widdersheim remembered Cox visiting in her “killer heels”, but not in spirit. “She had it all. The smarts, the charm, and she was also a lot of fun. You wanted to be around her.”
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