Gary Haugen

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Gary Haugen serves as President and CEO of International Justice Mission. IJM is an international human rights agency that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery and oppression worldwide. Based on referrals of abuse received from relief and development organizations, IJM conducts professional investigations of the abuses and mobilizes intervention on behalf of the victims.

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[edit] Education

Haugen received a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University, magna cum laude, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, cum laude, where he was the Ford Foundation Scholar in International Law. While a law student, Haugen also served as the visiting scholar in politics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

[edit] Career before International Justice Mission

In the mid-1980s, Haugen served on the executive committee of the National Initiative for Reconciliation in South Africa. Chaired by then-Bishop Desmond Tutu and Michael Cassidy of African Enterprise, the NIR consisted of Christian leaders proactively devoted to political reform and racial reconciliation.

Upon his departure from South Africa, Haugen began work for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, based in New York. In the late 1980s, Haugen conducted a structural examination of the Philippine government's prosecution of human rights abuses committed by its military and police. Haugen investigated multiple murders and other violent abuses by the Philippine military and police, and participated in the exhumations of victims and the provision of protection services for witnesses. In analysis of his investigations, Haugen authored a book published by the Lawyers Committee entitled Impunity: Human Rights Prosecutions in the Philippines.

After working with the Lawyers Committee, Haugen began a career with the United States Department of Justice. In 1994, Haugen was put on loan from the Department of Justice to the United Nation's Center for Human Rights to serve as Officer In Charge of its genocide investigation in Rwanda. In this capacity, Haugen directed an international team of lawyers in the gathering of evidence against the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. Haugen developed the investigative strategy, protocols and field methodology for gathering eye-witness testimony and physical evidence from nearly 100 mass grave and massacre sites across Rwanda. Haugen personally conducted and directed field investigations at various sites.

Until April of 1997, when he left the Department of Justice to found International Justice Mission, Haugen worked as a senior trial attorney with the Police Misconduct Task Force of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. When Congress granted the Attorney General new authority to pursue enforcement action against police departments with patterns or practices of misconduct, Haugen was selected to serve on a small task force with national enforcement authority.

Haugen currently serves on the Human Rights Executive Directors Working Group and on the Board of the Overseers of the Berkeley Journal of International Law.

[edit] International Justice Mission

In 1997, inspired by the findings of an extensive study he undertook to document the injustices witnessed by overseas development and relief missionaries and workers, Haugen founded International Justice Mission. The study, surveying more than 65 organizations and representing 40,000 overseas workers, uncovered a nearly unanimous awareness of abuses of power by police and other authorities in the communities such workers served. By launching IJM, Haugen hoped to provide legal aid and advocacy for these victims of oppression.

Haugen currently serves as President and CEO of International Justice Mission, which now employs over 200 individuals on five continents.


[edit] Media / Public Appearances

Haugen has spoken at numerous venues around the world including Harvard University, Yale Law School, Berkeley School of Law and Stanford University. In February 2002, Haugen hosted a policy briefing on international sex trafficking with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in conjunction with the events of the Reebok Human Rights Award. In November 2005, Haugen moderated a panel on human trafficking between Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Hilary Clinton (D-NY.) Haugen and the work of IJM have been featured by 60 Minutes II, The Today Show, Dateline NBC, NBC Nightly News, The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, BBC World News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio. Haugen has authored numerous articles on foreign affairs, international law and human rights. His most recent book, Terrify No More, was released in January 2005 and highlights the removal of elementary-age girls from brothels. He is also the author of Good News about Injustice.



[edit] Bibliography

Good News About Injustice (ISBN 0830822240) Terrify No More (ISBN 0849918383)