In recognition of the fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) is dedicated to protecting the basic legal rights of individuals in countries around the world. Specifically, IBJ works to guarantee all people the right to competent legal representation, the right to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to a fair trial.
IBJ enables local implementation of laws safeguarding citizens and trains and supports defenders of justice and human rights.
IBJ seeks to end the use of torture and make it possible for defenders to do their jobs professionally, safely, and effectively.
National programs in seven countries train defense lawyers, promote fairer justice systems, and educate the public about their legal rights.
IBJ envisions a world where the basic legal rights of every man, woman, and child are respected in case of an arrest or judicial accusation, no matter their socioeconomic status. To achieve this, we are building a movement to tip the scales, ending worldwide, the use of torture as the cheapest form of investigation.
Accelerating our existing network: IBJ’s community of defenders, government actors, and private stakeholders, is an infrastructural backbone for collaboration around global justice. By harnessing the scaling power of technology through a digital justice platform, we are leveraging automation and systems thinking.
Founder and CEO, International Bridges to Justice
Karen Tse, an international human rights lawyer, Unitarian Universalist minister, and former San Francisco public defender, founded International Bridges to Justice in 2000. Karen first developed her interest in the cross section of criminal law and human rights in 1986, after observing Southeast Asian refugees detained in a local prison without trial. In 1994, she moved to Cambodia to train the country’s first core group of public defenders and subsequently served as a United Nations Judicial Mentor. Under the auspices of the U.N., she trained judges and prosecutors, and established the first arraignment court in Cambodia. After witnessing hundreds of prisoners of all ages held without trials, usually after being tortured into coerced confessions, Karen formed IBJ in 2000 to promote systemic global change in the administration of criminal justice. Her greatest frustration was seeing such a readily available solution, early access to counsel, overlooked time and time again by the world community. Karen founded IBJ to implement an innovative “Bottom-up/Top-down” model focused on building capacity on the ground and reshaping policy at the governmental level. Using this method, she began negotiating measures in judicial reform in China, Vietnam, and Cambodia through a careful and collaborative approach with each of the governments to achieve results in politically sensitive environments. Karen expanded IBJ’s model to build programs in Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and India. IBJ also created a Global Defense Support Program to assist public defenders worldwide and currently has a presence in over 40 countries.
As of 2022, IBJ-trained lawyers and advocates have provided legal advice and/or representation to over 500,000 people across 52 countries. More than 40,000 lawyers have been trained through live events and through training of trainers, while IBJ’s digital eLearning and DefenseWiki materials have been accessed more than 28 million times. IBJ’s rights awareness campaigns have reached more than 40 million people. Policy-level shifts have resulted directly from IBJ’s training in Burundi where IBJ source material was quoted and put into law in 2010. Globally, the integration of access to justice as a priority within international frameworks, particularly SDG 16 has been a key campaign victory for IBJ. Civil society’s increasing adoption of IBJ’s language on access to justice and the rising use of non-confrontational soft-governance approaches to human rights are also indicators of IBJ’s deeper impact.
Human rights lawyer Karen Tse is Founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice, an organization that provides prisoners in 48 countries with access to justice and prevents torture as…
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