Education is widely considered one of the greatest investments a government can make into its citizens and economic prosperity. At the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), government officials are working with partner countries to improve the quality and reach of their education systems. The agency recently stood up the Center for Education, charged with achieving sustained, measurable improvements in students’ learning outcomes and skills development. In addition, education teams are embedded within regional bureaus and are responsible for assisting with country-level education programming. 

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to intern with USAID’s Africa Bureau, where I learned how the U.S. Government (USG) foreign assistance is programmed to support children and youth’s educational development. During my internship, I participated in numerous working groups that deepened my understanding of what education has the power to do for children and youth, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalized.

One of my most meaningful assignments was helping to lead the USG’s Working Group on Education in Crisis and Conflict Settings. Through this experience, I learned that schooling is important for a myriad of reasons beyond learning outcomes and job placement. In conflict and crises zones, for instance, schools can provide children with physical and emotional protection as well as a greater sense of normalcy. 

For this group, I was responsible for encouraging participant engagement and organizing monthly meetings. I secured additional members, solicited member feedback, and crafted agendas based on participant input and events on the ground. Through this group, I was able to see first-hand how the USG is ensuring the continuity of education programming in some of the most difficult humanitarian crises zones—from Haiti to Afghanistan.

I was also able to take part in several joint research projects that USAID funded in collaboration with external partners. These research projects included: 1) a review of social and emotional learning outcomes for students in Africa, 2) an analysis of how education contributes to resiliency in Africa (and vice-versa), and 3) an examination of how violence against children is perpetrated within school systems and recommendations for prevention. I coordinated workflow between USAID and external partners for these research projects, compiled feedback, participated in working sessions on key findings, and observed field interviews. 

Most significantly, I distilled each of the final research papers into three two-page summary sheets for ease of reference for our team and future collaborators. Of the three research topics, I found the insight into social and emotional learning outcomes to be the most interesting. While I had conceptualized learning outcomes solely in terms of curriculum content, schooling is also paramount for developing students’ social and emotional competencies – from peer-to-peer dynamics to emotional self-regulation. These competencies, which schools, directly and indirectly, teach their students, are critical for helping individuals to manage shocks and stressors into adulthood.

Lastly, I helped to roll out two new initiatives within my team for USAID writ large. First, I helped launch a new USAID working group on promoting resiliency within the education system in Africa.  I worked with the lead organizer to finalize the participant list, develop the kickoff meeting agenda, and review the group’s statement of work and overall mission. Second, I assisted with developing an online training module designed to assist officers with safeguarding and protecting children’s rights within education programs. I coordinated with external partners to organize a two-week pilot testing of the training module – securing expert USAID officers to help pilot, creating and reviewing feedback forms, and taking the training myself.

From this training, I learned that schools are not always safe spaces that positively impact the lives of children.  At times, schools are the site of violence and abuse, particularly in crisis and conflict-affected areas and among the most marginalized. The training taught me how to identify signs of abuse and respond to and report situations of abuse. 

At the conclusion of my internship, I not only gained greater insight into education programming but also into my future career trajectory. I applied to the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Program (MIP) at the the Freeman Spogli Institute with the intention to focus on international security from a humanitarian, development, and human rights perspective. I envision my next job within USAID, the U.S. Department of State, or the United States Institute of Peace. Now that I have interned with USAID, I am certain that this is still the path I see for myself. Following my internship, I plan to apply to the Presidential Management Fellows Program, as well as directly to USG hiring agencies. I am confident that my time spent at USAID has prepared me well for this new chapter.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a regional economic forum with 21 member economies, including the US, China, and Russia, headquartered in Singapore. As a summer graduate intern at APEC, I worked closely with APEC’s policy unit that oversees and conducts policy research and analysis for publications and reports, which are used as key discussion agendas in ministerial level discussions and conferences. The Policy Support Unit (PSU)’s core areas of work are 1) trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, 2) structural reform, 3) connectivity including supply chain connectivity and global supply chains, 4) economic and financial analysis, and 5) sustainable economic development. During my summer internship, I was able to gain direct experience with almost all of these core areas through conducting quantitative and qualitative research.

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The PSU has been working on a publication that analyzed the impacts of travel restrictions during the pandemic. The report provided evidence and policy recommendations for APEC economies to resume cross-border travel in a safe and equitable way. I was tasked to draft two sections of the report, including a literature review of various multilateral organizations’ initiatives on safe re-opening, and an analysis of the disproportionate impacts of travel restrictions on vulnerable population, especially women. Women were not only experiencing economic impacts from border closures, such as loss of jobs and business closures, but women seeking abortion procedures in countries with restrictive regulations faced significant challenges when cross-border travel was limited to “essential workers.” Such challenges were even more pronounced for lower-income women or women with disabilities who may not be able to access services through other means domestically. 

I also worked on drafting APEC’s flagship publication, APEC in Charts 2021, which resides within APEC’s fourth core area of work, economic and financial analysis. APEC in Charts is an annual publication that provides a visual overview of the region’s economic, trade and investment performance. Using data from international organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations, I calculated aggregate statistics for the APEC region on the following indicators: trend in trade, tariff liberalization indicators such as free trade agreements, trend in FDI inflows and outflows, COVID-19 vaccination status, and various sustainability indicators such as household food waste and greenhouse gas emissions trends.

Since APEC includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, both of which did not have disaggregated data, the most challenging part of this task was to locate and calculate the information using limited data. While data disaggregation was challenging, I was thankful for all those nights that I stayed up in the first quarter to complete data aggregation for economic analysis assignments for the Global Economy course, INTLPOL 302, which built a foundation for key skills required at APEC.

I also immersed myself in the topic of climate change over the summer. Policy actions on climate change became one of the center of APEC’s agendas to build economic resilience post-COVID. I drafted a section on climate change in APEC’s Regional Trends Analysis (ARTA) report by conducting quantitative and qualitative research on green indicators. Calculating carbon emissions was one challenge, but comparing how much each economy had pledged to reduce emissions and what it would actually take to keep global warming below 2°C was another challenge. 

Climate change was not a topic I was very familiar with from a research standpoint, but I took the opportunity to self-educate through reading various literature, including the most recent publication from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It was striking that more than 60% of global greenhouse gases were generated by APEC economies. Unless APEC as a region curbs cumulative emissions, the expected repercussions are disastrous. Again, the most vulnerable – including women and girls, migrants, those in poverty, mountain communities and people in urban slums – will experience more severe consequences, and the repercussions are even more pronounced for those in developing nations.

This 11-week internship experience at APEC over the summer was a rewarding one that helped me understand the way multilateral organizations work. I was motivated by working with an organization responsible for shaping economic policies through cooperation to build resilience in the post-COVID world. Plus, I was able to tone up key techniques learned from MIP’s core courses such as STATA and advanced excel skills. Although it was a remote internship, I benefited from learning from my fellow interns and co-researchers on their broad range of expertise and experience. I strongly recommend future MIP students work with APEC over the summer as policy interns!

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Studies of human rights in North Korea are even more important now, in light of North Korea’s response to COVID-19, said Shin at the opening of the discussion. The DPRK has kept its borders closed for nearly two years, resulting in reduced trade and worsening the economic and social situation of its population.

Ambassador King, who was also a 2019-20 Koret Fellow and Visiting Scholar at APARC, identified the guiding questions of the volume, indicating that “This conundrum that we talk about in the title is an interaction between security and human rights. Is there a tradeoff? If we focus on human rights, does that make it more difficult for us to deal with security issues? If we focus on security issues do we have to ignore human rights?” 

An Error of Zero-Sum Thinking

While North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the security threat it poses have occupied the center stage and eclipsed other issues in recent years, the book’s contributors posit that human rights promotion remains an integral part of U.S. policy on the Korean peninsula. In his chapter, Victor Cha, Senior Vice President and Korea Chair at CSIS and former Koret Fellow and Visiting Scholar at APARC, analyzes the error in the zero-sum logic of North Korean human rights. "The United States sees a zero-sum relationship between pressing for human rights and denuclearization negotiations, while South Korea sees a zero-sum relationship between pressing for human rights and inter-Korean engagement," explains Cha. But the denuclearization and human rights agendas are inextricably intertwined.

The lost ground on addressing the North Korean human rights crisis is still recoverable, the contributors to The North Korean Conundrum believe. How could North Korea engage on human rights? The chapters in the volume lay out a number of ways. One opportunity to address human rights issues is through health and humanitarian assistance. Another way is to promote the economic and consumer rights of North Korean citizens to improve their quality of life and help foster a nascent civil society. And yet another way is to support information flow to the North. 

Interwoven Challenges

Nat Kretchun, Vice President for Programs at the Open Technology Fund, examines in his chapter the changing information environment in North Korea, observing how the information control system North Korean authorities are constructing is broadly characterized by an effort to move communications and media consumption onto state-controlled networks via state-sanctioned devices. The central aim is to create a “clean” information environment in which North Korean citizens use approved networked devices that technologically prevent the consumption and spread of unsanctioned content. At the same time, North Korean authorities have come to terms with a more marketized economic future. "Mobile phones have the ability to facilitate market-based economic transactions, the primary driver of much of what (limited) internal economic growth the country is seeing," notes Kretchun.

The contributors all agree that the challenge of human rights in North Korea is a complex one. It is intertwined with a host of issues, including life in the North Korean police state, inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, access to information, and international cooperation—all topics the volume addresses. We frequently separate these issues for analytical purposes or because they are dealt with in different ways or by different entities. But in fact, they are inseparable. Recognizing this interrelationship is the first step toward moving forward in a way that addresses the very serious North Korean security concerns while at the same time bringing human rights and humanitarian concerns into the equation.