On Feb. 28, Carolyn Nash, Asia advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, discussed human rights advocacy within the evolving foreign policy landscape. The event was hosted by Pomona’s Women in Global Security (WIGS) program, led and organized by politics professor Tom Le and his fellows, Trinity Tai PO ’26 and Jonna Sobbeloff-Gittes PO ’25.
Nash has lived and worked in multiple countries — including Indonesia, Uganda and Myanmar — overseeing human rights and governance programs. She now advocates for foreign policies that improve human rights in Asia on behalf of Amnesty International, a grassroots organization that aims to expose human rights abuses and to pressure those in power to stop them.
During the talk, Nash said that human rights advocacy is about changing laws, policies and practices.
“It’s not educating for the sake of educating and it’s not changing hearts and minds,” she said.
According to Nash, Amnesty International publishes reports that uncover human rights abuses and gives broad recommendations to those in power to enact change. However, when speaking before decision-makers like the U.S. government, Nash said that she focuses mainly on using “actionable” recommendations rather than on explaining human rights abuses.
“The people that you are talking to in those rooms, those decision makers, almost always know about the terrible thing that you’re telling them is happening,” she said.
Nash added that she often urges ambassadors or other decision-makers to go to places where they know or suspect human rights abuses are taking place.
“It’s a way of signaling to the [foreign] government that the U.S. is paying attention to the fact that something has happened there,” Nash said.
She also discussed how the fields of human rights and foreign policy are changing, especially now that Donald Trump’s second term of presidency has begun, saying that Americans have become disillusioned with many federal organizations.
“I very strongly feel that the dismantling of USAID is easier because of this, that the sidelining of the State Department, the sidelining of U.S. diplomacy that we’re seeing right now is easier because of this,” Nash said, referring to Trump and Elon Musk’s federal budget slashing.
With recent decisions to reduce foreign aid and what Nash described as a decreasing emphasis on human rights, she said that she does not believe other nations will step in to supplement the aid that the U.S. has long provided.
Although Tai and Sobeloff-Gittes said they thought Nash’s outlook regarding the Trump administration and the future of human rights wasn’t optimistic, they appreciated her perspective.
“I thought it was really interesting to get that perspective from someone whose whole career has been advocating for human rights and now works in DC and is seeing these massive changes firsthand,” Sobeloff-Gittes said.
Elaborating on her talk at Pomona, Nash gave an interview to TSL in which she said that young people who wish to mobilize for human rights issues are often not given the right voice or space to do so.
“I do not think that in this country in general — and in most countries — we give young people the voice that they are capable of having in shaping the world that they live in,” Nash said. “I think that creates a sense of distrust because people who are engaged and thoughtful and about to start their lives as adults are not able to shape the contours of the world that they have to go into in the ways that they should be able to shape the world.”