Carr Center names its 2002-03 fellows

The Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has named its 2002-03 fellows. The six fellows bring with them the accumulated experience of working on a variety of compelling human rights issues on four continents.

“Amidst their breadth of experience and interest, this year’s fellows are united by a proven commitment to the ideals of human rights and a tradition of activism,” said Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center. “They have already made a considerable impact on the human rights field and we are excited to be a continuing part of their work.”

The 2002-03 fellows

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is a Sudanese anthropologist and a visiting assistant professor of Africana and gender studies at Brown University. Abusharaf comes to the center to develop policy recommendations for improving the experience of war-displaced women. Her primary fields of interest are security, human rights protection, and the cultural strategies adopted by displaced women to cope with the trauma of violence and dislocation. Her work has received support from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as the Andrew Mellon Foundation and M.I.T Center for International Studies. An accomplished scholar, Abusharaf is the author of numerous publications, including “Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America” (Cornell University Press, 2002). She is also the editor of “Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives” (forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press).

Robert Choo grew up in Korea and the United States. He returns to Harvard, where he received an A.B. in 1990 and an M.P.P. in 1994, concentrating in international development. At the Carr Center, he plans to undertake research on integrating the right to development into the traditional human rights framework. Choo also plans to address the question of how to incorporate international human rights conventions into U.S. domestic law on the death penalty. After graduating from Yale in 1999, Choo worked as a law clerk to the Hon. Betty Fletcher of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Hon. Judith Rogers of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. Choo’s human rights experience includes work at Save the Children in Vietnam and Myanmar as well as Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Choo is the author of several articles in Rutgers Law Review and Harvard Business Review.

Vjosa Dobruna was one of only three women appointed to the Joint Interim Administrative Structure of Kosovo (part of the UN mission to Kosovo). She served the organization as national head of the Department for Democratic Governance and Civil Society, mandated to monitor and recommend laws on human and minority rights, equal opportunities, good governance, and media. A Kosovar pediatric neurologist and human rights activist, Dobruna is a senior adviser to Hope Fellowships, a training program for a new generation of Kosovar leaders, and is vice president of the Board of Governors of RTK, the only public radio and television station in Kosovo. Dobruna is also the founder and former director of the Center for the Protection of Women and Children, the first such organization in Kosovo. Having collected evidence from victims at sites of massacres and other atrocities, she was targeted by Serb special police. Subsequently caught up in the flood of refugees during the 1999 “ethnic cleansing,” Dobruna created a center in Tetova, Macedonia, that provided emergency shelter and care to traumatized women. She has also worked at the Mother Teresa Humanitarian Association, providing health care and advocating for women’s and children’s health rights, and has taught courses on health education for women and on child nutrition and development. She is also the founder of a safe house for battered women in Gjakove, Kosovo.

Max Glaser hails from the Netherlands and joins the Carr Center after spending a decade as a senior policy-maker at the humanitarian relief organization Doctors Without Borders, Holland. At Harvard, Glaser plans to concentrate on the challenges posed to humanitarian agencies in the context of protracted conflicts characterized by severe human rights violations. Glaser’s research at the center builds on his experience with aid operations to Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, India, Colombia, Uganda, and Angola, where he served as head of the Doctors Without Borders mission. Recently, Glaser served as head of the Context and Evaluation Department for Doctors Without Borders where his responsibilities included developing a methodology for monitoring potential emergencies and overseeing a long-term project to strengthen security for the organization’s missions and international relief workers. Glaser holds a master’s degree in international relations and international public law from the University of Amsterdam.

Binaifer Nowrojee will hold the first joint fellowship at both the Carr Center and the Boston Consortium for Gender, Peace, Security and Human Rights – a group of five leading academic centers and programs dedicated to research and study on issues regarding gender, conflict resolution, and conflict prevention. A distinguished human rights advocate, Nowrojee joins the center to examine how international tribunals can better achieve justice for Rwandan rape survivors. After graduating from Columbia Law School, Nowrojee worked for numerous human rights organizations, including the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Swedish NGO Foundation for Human Rights, and the Women’s Rights Project, before joining the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, where she is now counsel. Nowrojee is the author of scores of articles and books on human rights and women, including “Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath” (Human Rights Watch, 1996). Originally from Kenya, Nowrojee earned her LL.M from Harvard.

Ivan Arreguín-Toft joins the center to focus on the political and military utility, or lack thereof, of systematic violations of the laws of war, or barbarism. Although military elites and human rights advocates have maintained passionately opposed views over the years, no one to date has set out to measure the consequences of barbarism on military operations and on postconflict politics. Arreguín-Toft published a journal-length treatment of this research in the summer 2001 issue of International Security, and a book manuscript is under review at Cornell University Press. He is currently an inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program. From 1984 to 1987, Arreguín-Toft served as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in Germany. He received his B.A. in political science and Russian languages and literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1990, and a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago in 1998, where his research focused on asymmetric conflict and how weak actors defeat strong actors in wars.