Karen Tse’s career as a high-flying UN lawyer took a left turn after an unexpected encounter with a twelve-year-old child who stole a bike. Karen, the Ohio-born daughter of immigrant parents from Hong Kong, was on assignment as a human rights lawyer in postwar Cambodia when she met the Cambodian boy who had been severely brutalized and indefinitely imprisoned by the police for nothing more than stealing a bicycle. This chance meeting became a moment of obligation—the defining event that eventually compelled Karen to commit her life to building judicial systems.
One among a handful of legal experts in Cambodia, Karen was instrumental in setting up the first arraignment court in Cambodia and training the first generation of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors in the country after Kmer Rouge’s genocide. Yet, even as she marked off the milestones in her prestigious job, Karen felt a constant hunger for spiritual fulfillment. She felt a calling to be a woman of cloth.
Karen went on to become a student at Harvard Divinity School, where she developed a concept paper for a human rights organization with a spiritual framework. This was followed by her ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister. But the sense of obligation that she had felt when she saw the fear in the face of the twelve-year-old prisoner refused to go away. The confused and terrified boy in the Cambodian prison became a symbol to Karen, of the thousands of unseen, unheard defendants around the world, whose basic rights were denied by inhumane criminal justice systems.The confused and terrified boy in the Cambodian prison became a symbol to Karen. And thus, in 2000, armed with a spiritual solution for a human rights problem, International Bridges to Justice (IBJ)was born, with the help of a fellowship from Echoing Green.
While the human rights of political prisoners often got lots of attention, few were talking or fighting for the rights of ordinary citizens trapped in underdeveloped criminal judicial systems. Karen’s vision was new and untested. Despite being dismissed as unrealistic, Karen was not deterred. IBJ was launched in China where it sought to become actively involved in research, advocacy, mobilizing, and training.
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