Karen Tse

Every day at the International Bridges toJustice office in Geneva, Switzerland, the staff stops their work to ring a bell, and light a candle. The bell reminds them of the interconnectedness of the universe, IBJ founder, president and CEO Karen Tse, said.

For today’s Humanosphere podcast, we’re talking with Karen Tse, founder and executive director of the Geneva-based organization International Bridges to Justice. Tse, an attorney who originally hailed from the San Francisco area, started IBJ in 2000 to fight the stunningly common use of torture or other abuses by law enforcement agencies, governments and others in power around the world.

When Karen Tse, a San Francisco public defender, arrived in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia to train defense lawyers in 1994, one of the first things she wanted to know was how criminal cases were investigated. When she asked her trainees, “there was silence,” Ms. Tse recalls. Suspects always came with confessions, the lawyers explained, making investigations unnecessary.