Student contributes to understanding of minority rights in Asia

Recently, news reached my inbox of the cool result of a student’s work.  Michael Caster (soon to be a second-year MALD) filled me in on how he came to be the author of a chapter in a report from the Minority Rights Group, a London-based NGO.  Regarding the report, he wrote:

On July 2, the Minority Rights Group published their annual report “State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples.”  As part of Fletcher’s Human Rights Project student organization and through Professor Hannum’s contact, the organization reached out to interested Fletcher students to apply to contribute to an unspecified project.  I applied and they asked me to assist with the publication, which soon turned into being a chapter author.  I wrote the section on East Asia, covering China, Japan, and Mongolia.  Having spent close to five years working on human rights issues in and around China it was a perfect fit.

You can follow more about Michael’s work via his blog and Twitter, as well as his writing for Open Democracy and past pieces on Waging Nonviolence.  Finally, he told me that this summer, “I am spending the summer between Thailand and Myanmar interning with the International Commission of Jurists, a Geneva-based international human rights organization.  In addition, I am researching human rights defender strategy with the support of a Topol Scholarship in Nonviolent Resistance, a new program started at Fletcher this year.  The summer spent in Southeast Asia will also be constructive for my capstone on the Rohingya crisis.”

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