PrintDebra Liang-Fenton
Faculty Member, Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding
Debra Liang-Fenton joined USIP’s Education and Training Center/Domestic in April 2008. Her focus is on exploring strategies for establishing good governance in post-conflict environments, and creating institutional networks for successful transitions. Liang-Fenton is a specialist on issues of human rights strategies, and building foundations for sustainable peace.
From 2000 to 2007, Liang-Fenton served as the founding executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to promoting human rights in North Korea. Under her leadership, the organization launched (with partner organization DLA Piper) a major campaign invoking the Responsibility to Protect doctrine with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister and founder of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights Kjell Magne Bondevik. She is also responsible for exposing North Korea’s political prison camp system, publishing for the first time prisoner testimonies and satellite images of North Korea’s gulag.
Prior to the Committee, Liang-Fenton directed USIP’s Human Rights Implementation Project, where she led a working group over a three year period, distilling best practices for U.S. human rights policy based on lessons learned from 14 countries. Liang-Fenton has also served as a founding editor of the Journal of Democracy, and was a program officer with the National Endowment for Democracy, exploring issues of accountability, political party development, and transitions.
Liang-Fenton serves on the Board of Directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (September 2007 – present). She was awarded a Reagan-Fascell Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy (2004); and delivered the keynote address at Amnesty International’s Annual General Meeting in 2003.
Additional Selected Works
Publications:
Editor of and contributor to:
- “Legal Strategies for Protecting Human Rights in North Korea” (2007)
- “Failure to Protect: A Call to the U.N. Security Council to Act in North Korea” (2006)
- “The North Korean Refugee Crisis: Human Rights and International Response” (2006)
- “Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea” (2005)
- “Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps” (2003)
- Implementing U.S. Human Rights Policy: Agendas, Policies and Practices (editor and contributor, USIP Press 2004)
- “U.S. Human Rights Policy toward Africa” (USIP Press 2001)
- “The Role of the Ambassador in Promoting U.S. Human Rights Policy” (USIP Press 2000)
- “U.S. Human Rights Policy: A 20-Year Assessment” (USIP Press 1999)
- “ The Golden Triangle: Burma, Laos, and Thailand” in International Handbook on Drug Control (Westview Press, 1992).
Multimedia
- On July 1, 2009, Debra Liang-Fenton was the featured expert in PBS’s Wide Angle documentary, “Crossing Heaven’s Border.” In her interview with Aaron Brown, Liang-Fenton discusses the plight of North Korean refugees, life inside North Korea, and what the international community needs to do about it.
Media
- Appearances on CNN, BBC, ABC, Fox, ITN Britain; collaborations with NBC News, CBS News, PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News and World Report, and other international print, television, and radio outlets.