Awarded to LSA undergraduate students to intern with Perseus Strategies, LLC in Washington, D.C., and its managing director, the renowned international human rights lawyer, Jared Genser (U-M Law '01).
Lauren King
BA Political Science
I would love to thank the Donia Human Rights Center and the University of Michigan International Institute for supporting my experience with Perseus Strategies this summer. I had the opportunity to work on a wide range of international human rights and international criminal law projects, and every once in a while I had the chance to be surprised and work on, say, a heat map for a Human Rights Report was one of those experiences that I never would’ve thought would be included in this internship, but that ended up being fun and a nice break from memoranda. Most of my work particularly focused on understanding how international law and certain treaties can be used to address systemic human rights violations and the subjects of political imprisonment, one of which I got to be “in the office” on the day that she finally escaped. I contributed to projects involving the United Nations, the International Criminal Court (ICC), treaty negotiations, country-specific human rights situations like Haiti, and I’ve detailed a couple of my favorite projects below.
The most intrinsically valuable project was a research memorandum on the Taliban in Afghanistan and the emerging campaign to recognize “gender apartheid” as a distinct crime in international law. I had the chance to discuss and present whether codifying a standalone crime of gender apartheid in the proposed Crimes Against Humanity treaty would provide meaningful legal value beyond existing international criminal law, particularly the crime against humanity of persecution detailed in the Rome Statute. I proposed a secondary perspective that perhaps the ICC’s July 2025 arrest warrants concerning Taliban leaders potentially proved sufficient in our standing persecution framework; in specific, the Court’s recognition that the Taliban’s systematic deprivation of women and girls could constitute gender persecution. I also researched arguments advanced by states and considered whether gender apartheid and persecution would satisfy the “materially distinct elements” approach used in international criminal law to determine whether multiple convictions can arise from the same conduct.
Additionally, I had the opportunity to work on a Haiti Human Rights Report, conducting mass-atrocity research that required me to assess and report (add to the report) recent developments such as the expansion of gang control and the role of the Viv Ansanm coalition. I also reported estimates of gang control in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, including UNODC reporting that gangs controlled approximately up to 90% of the metropolitan area. I also researched specific patterns of violence instructed by my supervisor and the ways gangs have used civilians and territory as part of their operations, including using civilians as human shields and the placement of women and children at the entrances to gang-controlled areas.
What I found most valuable about the summer was learning that international law is never straightforward and is never simply the application of a rule to answer a problem. Living in D.C. this summer, I was able to meet many undergraduate students undergoing the same self-discovery process that I am right now, and it was valuable to compare and contrast experiences and to further my understanding of what this field entails and how I would like to contribute to it in the future. Thank you for the opportunity.
