“I think the hardest and most challenging thing for an entrepreneur is to find the inner strength to keep going, the belief that the goal is possible.” – how Karen Tse achieved incredible improvements for human rights in Asia

Karen Tse, Founder and President of International Bridges for Justice (IBJ)

Karen is a small and very energetic social entrepreneur of American/Chinese heritage, based in Geneva. An inter-national lawyer, she currently works to promote human rights and the rule of law in China, Cambodia and Viet-nam. In these countries, the mistreatment and torture of detained citizens is common. Prisoners often do not receive a fair trial. While some laws protecting criminal defendants’ rights do exist, they are frequently not enforced, due in large part to a lack of training and education among lawyers and ordinary citizens alike. Karen’s organi-zation works on establishing and implementing criminal law systems in countries where there is not a long tradition of human rights.
Arriving for lunch in the Geneva headquarters of IBJ, a two room office in the city center, I just wanted to talk to Karen about her impressive work. However, at one o’clock in the morning, I found myself in a kebab restau-rant five blocks from the IBJ office, where we spent the whole afternoon working on financial statements that Karen desperately needed to send to one of her donors by midnight. Satisfied to have come one step further, Karen said: “Now you see what work as a social entre-preneur is sometimes all about: achieving the best you can to realize your vision with whatever resources you can get. And never give up, just keep going.”
On this site we give you a short impression of Karen’s challenges and fears and a few facts about her organi-zation, International Bridges for Justice (IBJ). You might read more about Karen’s life in our book "MyImpact".

Karen Tse’s selected quotations:
“I’ve spent a lot of time working with governments on judicial reform, training legal aid professionals in China, Cambodia and Vietnam, and creating awareness about basic legal rights in these countries. Currently, we spear-head much of this work from Geneva.”

“I was completely naïve when I started IBJ, in that I had no idea of how difficult and hard this would be. I recog-nized an urgent need and thought I had a great idea, idealistically believing that everybody in the whole world would come and support me. I thought I would be done with setting up the organization within a year and would then move on with my life.”

“When I found instead that I had no co-workers, no mo-ney, no decent computer, not even a printer, it was a really challenging situation for me. Even though now we still have to fight to receive the support we desperately need, we have already begun to make incredible accom-plishments in the last few years.”

“I wrote the mission statement in 1999. Even after I re-cognized that it would be very difficult to get support, and that it would not be easy to find funding, quitting has never been an option. I never thought about giving up. Even in the lowest, lowest moments I always strongly believed that I had to do this. Maybe not on the grand scale I had originally envisioned, maybe I would have to scale down – but I had to do it.”

“I do remember at various points, breaking down, crying — thinking, “why am I doing this?” I received strong resistance from many sides despite the fact that I really believed that IBJ’s innovative approach could help people in horrible situations. In Cambodia, a lot of police officers are trained so badly that they would not even realize that they are supposed to collect evidence against a suspect. They would just torture someone until he confesses, put him in jail and consider the case closed. But I saw a solu-tion in working with the government and developing trai-nings on the proper implementation of criminal law and so that’s what I am doing. Improving such desperate condi-tions is what keeps me going.”

“I think when you start a company in the business world and it isn’t working well, fine, you quit and start another money-making venture. In the social space it is comple-tely different. I was seeing a specific need that had to be met and felt that if I didn’t take care of it, the need would not be addressed. And this need had to be met because people were and still are tortured every day. So quitting was not an option.”

“I’ve never regretted starting IBJ, and experiencing all the hard times. As Kahlil Gilbran says: ‘Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laugh-ter arises was once filled with your own tears.’ Thus, it is often from the same place of depth that the sorrow has created that joy can arise. I’m grateful for the challenges I experienced in founding IBJ.

“When I first started IBJ, I thought the destination would be the most important thing. After a while I had to change this attitude and recognized two things: first, it is the journey not the destination that is most important, and secondly, it is not what you receive from the outside, but it is who you become in the process of working to-wards your goal that really matters.”

“At some higher level, when you know you are contribu-ting to the solution, not the problem, you feel deep satis-faction.”

“At some point, everybody has to connect to something bigger than himself, otherwise they will never be satisfied with their life. Joy comes from working for something big-ger than yourself.”

Some background on Karen Tse:
After finishing UCLA Law School in 1990, Karen Tse wor-ked as a human rights lawyer and public defender in various countries. Karen, who had previously worked in the San Francisco public defenders office, first conceived of the idea for IBJ when she witnessed the problems in the Cambodian legal system while working there between 1994 to 1997 for the Cambodian Defenders Project and the United Nation's Center for Human Rights Judicial Mentor program.
After her return from Cambodia in 1997, Karen entered Harvard Divinity School and became an ordained minister. During that time she developed the idea of International Bridges for Justice and started IBJ. Since 2001 she has resided with her family in Geneva, Switzerland, the setting of many international organizations and a location ideally situated between IBJ’s projects in Asia and support net-works in the United States and Europe.

Some background on International Bridges for Justice:
International Bridges for Justice was officially founded in 2001 to address the legal needs of Asia's citizens. As a non-profit organization, IBJ works with the governments of Cambodia, China and Vietnam to assist them in strengthening their rapidly expan-ding legal aid systems. Operating from the premise that just and re-liable legal systems translate into secure and stable societies, IBJ focuses on the development and support of those systems. This includes increasing awareness with-in the legal community through advisement campaigns, trainings and workshops.
In recent years, countries such as Cambodia, China and Vietnam have taken a stronger stance in favor of human rights by signing international conventions and adopting domestic laws that safeguard the rights of ordinary citi-zens. Unfortunately, many of these laws remain unen-forced due to the lack of trained lawyers and other signi-ficant resources. Public defenders and legal aid attorneys have made urgent requests for international support and assistance. These requests, combined with the recent establishment of yet unenforced laws present a window of opportunity to effect lasting change in the justice sys-tems of these countries.
IBJ fills a niche in the non-profit arena as an organization that approaches social and human rights through a spe-cific commitment to the legal development of effective criminal justice systems in Asia.

If you would like to engage with the work of Karen and IBJ please visit www.ibj.org
or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly