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I absolutely love Phnom Penh.
It's one of my favorite cities.
There are tuk tuks and motos and cars and trucks
going every which way.
The second you get off the plane,
you're just hit by how vibrant the city is.
It's hectic and busy and bustling
and just everything I love about the city.
It has amazing food.
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One of the really special things about Stanford students
is they're not satisfied to just learn in the classroom.
They really want to take the knowledge that they're
getting in the classroom, and they
want to get their hands dirty and apply that knowledge
to real world problems.
The global studies internship program
places 80 students in more than 20 countries around the world
every summer.
The WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International
Justice works with the global studies internship program
to offer different types of field placements.
Most recently, we offered two different opportunities
in Cambodia.
One was with our trial monitoring
team at the Extraordinary Chambers
in the Courts of Cambodia, and the other one
was a placement with the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
is a hybrid tribunal.
So half of it is UN run, and half of it
is domestic courts in Cambodia.
It's pretty unique within international criminal courts,
and its purpose is to try the senior members of the Khmer
Rouge, so those who were most responsible for the crimes
committed in Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979.
We spent our time during the day doing real live transcriptions
of the proceedings.
We also work with the media summarizing the proceedings.
The way I think about it is mainly
trying to get these stories that have never
been heard before out into the public in order
to reach some sort of closure and justice.
Trial monitoring programs, there's two main purposes.
The first is to ensure that the proceedings are
following fair trial standards.
The other piece is the educational component.
So by producing these weekly monitoring reports,
we're creating a historical record
for researchers and students and the community at large.
In order to achieve progress in the area of human rights
or an accountability or ending impunity,
a properly functioning legal system is indispensable.
The rule of law and human rights are really
two sides of the same coin.
Since working here, I realize that it's
much more important to think of what's
going on here as a hope for a more peaceful future
and an educational future.
The international community invests
hundreds of millions of dollars in these justice
processes, but then they end.
Then the court will close.
And there is no better institution
to embody the legacy than the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
When the Khmer Rouge came to power
in '75, what used to be a high school
then became Security Center 21.
Anywhere from eight to 15,000 people
passed through Tuol Sleng and were
subsequently brought to Choeung Ek to the killing fields
and killed.
And there's only around seven known survivors.
Part of my job is to write information panels,
to research and cross check and fact check everything,
and to provide a very factual account of what happened here.
It's a really emotional space to be in,
so working with people every day who lived that reality
is really important.
And very special that I can share that with them
and they're open to discussing it.
Cambodia is a developing country that
has many of the problems-- political, social, economic--
that developing countries have.
In addition, it has the burden of its own history.
It's a particularly rich environment
for students to have that kind of really
deep cultural experience that goes so far beyond being
a mere observer.
That's also why it's really important for the students
to be working together with Cambodians as part of our team.
I work for Handa Center in Cambodia
because I want to contribute my knowledge to the student.
I wish that my contribute about the human right in Cambodia
can be good for the new generation.
And then Cambodia will be exactly of the rule of law.
There's tremendous value in enabling students
to leave the university setting and learn from other cultures,
learn new ways of doing things.
I think it helps you develop an understanding
of your own humanity.
Students develop a set of personal relationships.
They begin to understand how organizations and institutions
work in other contexts.
And they get practice in really thinking
about how the expertise that they're
getting in the classroom is useful in the real world.
We'll always be checked by spending
some time in a different country and interacting with people
of a different culture.
There's always more that you can know.
There's always more detail that you can add to your knowledge.
Traveling is one way to try to seek new perspectives
and to get out of your comfort zone, and hopefully
that will tell me something about myself
and how we can improve our own society.
For more, please visit us at stanford.edu.