HRP’s Summer 2020 Fellows Will Intern Remotely at Human Rights Orgs
HRP is pleased to announce its 2020 summer fellowship cohort: Sondra Anton JD’22, Anoush Baghdassarian JD’22, Zarko Perovic JD’22, and Mohammad Zia JD’21. Each year, HRP awards students funding to undertake summer internships at human rights organizations around the world. Due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, this year’s fellows will be working remotely for their organizations. Learn more about this year’s cohort below.
Sondra Anton is a rising 2L at HLS. Sondra’s primary area of focus is international human rights law and global justice, with specific attention to accountability in post-conflict societies and victim-centered advocacy efforts in response to mass atrocity. Before coming to HLS, she received her Master’s degree in Politics from the University of Oxford, where her dissertation focused on the agency of national actors in pursuing foreign human rights prosecutions. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies and International studies from Washington University in St. Louis.
This summer, Sondra will be interning with the International Human Rights Clinic, as well as working part-time at the International Crisis Group on research initiatives relating to transitional justice in Sri-Lanka.
Anoush Baghdassarian is a rising 2L at HLS. She has a Master’s degree in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Spanish, and Human Rights from Claremont McKenna College. Anoush is the co-founder of the Rerooted Archive, which documents more than 200 testimonies from Syrian-Armenians who have fled the conflict in Syria, contributing the testimonies to UN documentation and related case-building efforts, as well as preserving the history and culture of this ethnic and religious minority community. Anoush’s most recent past work experiences include working for the Armenian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, the Human Rights Defender’s Office in Yerevan, and Civitas Maxima in Geneva. Throughout law school she plans to further develop her career path in international criminal law and transitional justice working on cases of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
This summer, Anoush will be interning with the Atlantic Council and the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center on a joint project focused on accountability for Iranian human rights violations. Anoush will also be working with Sentry, an investigative and policy team, focused on war crimes in Sudan.
Zarko Perovic is a rising 2L at HLS. His previous work background has been split between the public and private sectors. In the public sector, he has focused primarily on atrocity prevention/human rights and he has worked in such places as the Office of Global Criminal Justice at the State Department as a John Gardner Fellow, the NGO Nonviolent Peaceforce as an unarmed peacekeeper in South Sudan, the ICTY Chambers as a legal intern on the Ratko Mladic case, and the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina as an intern in Mostar. In the private sector, he has worked as an investment associate in a hedge fund and co-founded a videoconferencing startup. In terms of his prior educational background, he has a BA in Political Science and Classical Civilizations from UC Berkeley and an MPhil in International Relations from Oxford where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
This summer, Zarko will be interning at Campaña Colombiana Contra Minas.
Mohammad is a rising 3L at HLS. Prior to law school, Mohammad completed an MPP from the University of Oxford as well as worked on energy technology and economic development as a Luce Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar. Fluent in Spanish and proficient in Arabic, French, and Urdu, Mohammad is interested in dispute resolution and the role of technology in economic development and human rights.
This summer, Mohammad will be interning with Dejusticia, a Colombian NGO, on technology and data-driven approaches for land restitution and the protection of vulnerable groups in the context of transitional justice.