Anne Cox

This past summer I had the opportunity to work in Phnom Penh, Cambodia focusing on both International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law. Cambodian experts in those two fields have been working hard for years, and especially since the Khmer Rouge regime, at teaching and enforcing uniformity around those practices. I had the honor to work with these individuals and learn from some of the brightest and most dedicated minds in the field. I had the opportunity to dig deep into research on how the Khmer Rouge committed illegal acts against its people. I wrote text for a manual on humanitarian law and newsletters on human rights, including highlighting ways in which human rights questions affect our lives, daily. I got to work on projects having to do with questions around land rights for Cambodia’s indigenous peoples.

The Public Interest Law Project gave me the financial support I needed to go do this important work and have this unique experience: learning about another country’s laws and protections for its people, how it has addressed crisis and change over the past forty years, and what its involvement is now in the modern global theater.