Jennifer Hainsfurther '08 wins American Society of International Law's Helton Fellowship

Jennifer Hainsfurther ’08 has won a 2010 Helton Fellowship from the American Society of International Law. The award offers $2,000 to pursue fieldwork or research related to international law, human rights, humanitarian affairs, and similar issues.

Hainsfurther will work in Thailand with the MAP Foundation, a grassroots non-governmental organization that seeks to empower Burmese migrant communities living and working in Thailand. She will help the foundation compile a “shadow report” on migrant women that details Thailand’s compliance with the U.N.’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and will be presented to the CEDAW Committee. Shadow reports help the committee to identify women’s rights issues that may be missing from official reports and to determine the validity of those reports.

In 2009, Hainsfurther published a piece in the American University International Law Review on CEDAW’s applicability to migrant workers. Currently a clerk for Visiting Professor Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Hainsfurther will begin her work with the MAP Foundation this summer. She was previously an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. Hainsfurther graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from NYU Law, where she had a full-tuition Institute of International Law and Justice Scholarship. She also earned a B.A. in political science and women’s studies from Duke University, where she graduated summa cum laude.

Posted on April 15, 2010