"How the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights can help you to develop and hone your skills and knowledge for your responsibilities in your current position."

In May 2004, I left Switzerland and headed to Pakistan where I started my "career" as a Delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). I'm based in Islamabad, the capital, but luckily the demands of my post require me to move around the country quite often. I travelled quite extensively in the shades of the eight thousand meters mountains in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, I walked through the dusty and harmoniously noisy streets of Quetta, I rubbed my eyes – incredulous – before the beauty of the old bazaar in Peshawar, I… Wait a minute, this is not at all what I'm supposed to write about isn't it?!? Well nevermind, at least this small off-the-subject paragraph clearly demonstrate how I deeply enjoyed my first mission as an ICRC delegate.

I'm sure that I would not have been able to appreciate the country and its multifaceted socio-cultural environment – different from anything I was used to – without having attended the MA in Human Rights.

Similarly, the MA greatly helped me in developing my professional skills and in understanding the challenges related to my job. The ICRC exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence and to provide them with assistance.

The MA helped me greatly in sharpening my ability to rapidly analyse and understand the various humanitarian situations I was propelled in. This short and seemingly banal sentence actually bears an enormous importance for an ICRC Delegate who usually works in context where adapting and giving a coherent picture of a given situation – frequently within a strict time constraint – is vital (often in the real sense of the term…).

The MA also gave me the opportunity to thoroughly study several international law treaties amongst which the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, which are the bedrock of International Humanitarian Law and the main documents on which the ICRC legally base its humanitarian action. Knowledge of human rights and humanitarian law documents has proven essential in my job. One of the core activities of the ICRC is to visit people who are detained because international or non-international armed conflicts and internal disturbances. During these visits, the ICRC monitors the conditions of the detention places and reports its findings to the detaining authorities, requesting them to correct eventual shortcomings. Believe me, having an in-depth knowledge of certain treaties and international law documents is an asset when your job is to monitor to what extent States respect their obligations under international law.

In conclusion I can safely affirm that without the MA in Human Rights I would not be able to appreciate and love my job as much as I do.

Author:
Andrea Acerbis
ICRC Delegate in Pakistan

Former student of Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
University of London
28 Russell Square
London WC1B 5DS
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (_0)20 7862 8844
Fax: +44 (0)20 7862 8820
web: http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/