Personal statement of ideally less than 1,000 words, including your motivation for choosing the nternational Law of Security, Peace and Sustainable Development (ILSPSD) program, why you consider yourself a suitable candidate, your research interests and placement/practice aims as well as your preferred study track for Semester 3 and the reasons for your choice.
{Note: this draft is about 1,600 words. I plan to cut it to under 1,000 and would welcome advice on what to cut. Im looking for advice how how to make this cohesive and narrative.}
Relief is meant to be free. For many of the most vulnerable, politics sets the price. My research asks how the law allows this, and how it could stop it. I am applying to the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in International Law of Security, Peace and Sustainable Development (ILSPSD) because I want to answer that question as a policy advocate for humanitarian organizations such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, or within the UN humanitarian system coordinated by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. Behind this ambition is my own research, which tracks documented accounts of international aid being restricted through political instrumentalization. My interest in humanitarian relief was sparked by countless personal accounts from friends and family in the Global South of aid recipients who found that help depended on who they were, not what they needed; it grew into a lasting commitment to human rights activism. With that commitment in mind, I took a degree in Healthcare Management while actively working on community building. I managed the international students' floor as a resident assistant, worked as a broadcast manager at the on-campus radio station, managed the LGBTQ+ and Black Student Association centers, and helped expand access to primary care for underserved residents of a rural part of my home state by renewing physician practices' federal Patient-Centered Medical Home designations, all while meeting my responsibilities as a student athlete. I wanted my work to have an international impact, and after graduating I pursued that directly.
My first step was a government-run teaching exchange program in ******* (country), where I was awarded a position as an English and international studies instructor. On the day of my arrival in ******* (city), the area was struck by multiple large earthquakes, devastating the prefecture and destroying local infrastructure. I spent my first four months there helping to coordinate disaster and rescue efforts alongside the Red Cross. During that time, I coordinated personnel rescue and recovery from rubble, confirmed the status and safety of international government workers across the prefecture via the registered phone bank, set up crowdfunding campaigns to raise donations, organized community meals at the ruins of a local landmark, and served as the area supervisor of the city's exchange language teachers. These experiences showed me firsthand how life-changing humanitarian relief is for those who need it most, and how much its success depends on coordination between governments, aid organizations, and local communities. That is the work I want to build my career on. I redirected my career path from education to project management. Coordinating global pharmaceutical clinical trials, I have spent much of my time refining my project accounting, clinical data processing, and portfolio management skills across studies in the US, Latin America, and Europe. In my free time, I returned to humanitarian relief and focused on its governance, specifically on how relief must be impartial and non-discriminatory yet remains subject to the agreement of the parties concerned. To study that tension, I built a web-based tracker of cases in which aid was delayed, rationed, or restricted, and I categorize each by how the aid was used for something other than meeting need. The cases highlight an ambiguous gray space between a lawful restriction of aid and an unlawful refusal of it. The cases highlight an ambiguous gray space between a lawful restriction of aid and an unlawful refusal of it. In my thesis, I aim to identify precisely how this gray space is exploited. What recurring legal mechanisms allow humanitarian aid to be converted into a tool of political control, and what clarification - through treaty interpretation, judicial opinion, or institutional reform - would close the gaps that sustain them?
The program's interdisciplinary design, which joins law, politics, and sustainability, builds on the cross-disciplinary training I gained through studying Healthcare Management during my undergraduate degree at ******* University. Business and Health Law Policy equipped me with legal reasoning, regulatory analysis, and compliance skills, as well as an in-depth understanding of the frameworks underpinning rights and access to care, like patient rights, informed consent, and non-discrimination. Sociology, Mass Communication, and Operations Management gave me a preliminary grounding in NGO management, from understanding how institutions treat vulnerable groups unequally to public advocacy, budgeting, and logistics. To build a legal foundation for this interest, I completed UC Louvain's edX courses in International Law and International Humanitarian Law. In International Law, I studied how treaties and custom bind states, and how state sovereignty limits what outside actors may do on a state's territory. In International Humanitarian Law, I focused on the rules governing relief. Article 70 of Additional Protocol I and Article 18 of Additional Protocol II require relief actions to be humanitarian, impartial, and conducted without adverse distinction, yet make them subject to the consent of the state concerned. I examined the ICRC's position that this consent may not be withheld arbitrarily, and the related prohibition on starving civilians as a method of warfare. I learned how to classify a conflict as international or non-international, identify which rules apply to it, and read treaty text alongside customary law. The Master's would turn this self-taught grounding into formal training, beginning at Leuphana with Public International Law and Global Security and Peaceful Dispute Settlement in International Law, and it would add practical skills through the program's legal clinics and work placements. Together, these would give me the legal background necessary for research on when the denial of humanitarian access becomes unlawful. In my second semester, the course Crisis Management in Europe and the World offered at IBEI would ground my understanding of how institutional actors react to crises and prepare me for the challenges I may face as a policymaker. Over the following summer, the Grotius Centre's summer school International Humanitarian Law in Theory and Practice would support my research interest in the protection of the civilian population, the part of humanitarian law where the rules on relief sit.
My professional and volunteer work has kept me close to questions of security and governance as well. At two global contract research organizations, I applied Good Clinical Practice, an international standard whose requirement of informed consent traces back to the Nuremberg Code, across trials in the US, Latin America, and Europe. That work trained me in the ethics of research involving people: informed consent, confidentiality, and independent review. I would bring the same standards to documenting the accounts of people affected by restricted aid. I learned how an international norm is turned into daily procedure, and how compliance is monitored across jurisdictions. Volunteering in court advocacy and peer support with a local domestic violence organization allowed me to work with survivors and to see how legal protection operates for one person at a time. At a community clinic, I helped run vaccination campaigns for uninsured residents, which showed me that access to care is a question of security as much as of health. I recently attended an international digital rights conference, where sessions on digital privacy and inclusion introduced me to how human rights law is being applied to new technology. In an operations leadership role at a nonprofit focused on AI in healthcare, I now work on that question in healthcare. This Master's will give me what my independent research lacks: formal training in how to examine and scrutinize legal policy. I hope to spend my third semester and dissertation at the University of Tartu because its track in International Law and Human Rights matches my research topic, which is when restricting aid becomes unlawful discrimination. Outside the classroom, I want to continue to understand unequal aid distribution from the bottom up, through the experience of the people it affects.
My research on the legality of humanitarian aid governance is why the International Law and Human Rights track at the University of Tartu is my first choice for Semester 3. Courses such as Protection of Marginalised Groups in International Human Rights Law and Law and Practice of the United Nations align with my focus on protecting the vulnerable under a legal framework. I am especially interested in the latter, taught by René Värk. In his 2022 analysis "Russia's Legal Arguments to Justify its Aggression Against Ukraine," he tests each of a state's legal justifications for its conduct against the actual content of the binding rule. That is the approach I aim to apply to humanitarian aid governance: examining the gap between what states and organizations claim justifies restricting or authorizing aid, and what the law actually permits. Taught in Tallinn, the track will also train me to analyze legal policy and test it against the cases I have documented. Living in the capital would also put me close to organizations where I could apply those skills, such as the Estonian Human Rights Centre and the Estonian Refugee Council, which supports displaced people in Estonia, Ukraine, and Jordan.
I do my best work in intercultural environments, where my preconceptions are tested and I come away with new perspectives. I would bring my community-building and leadership experience to this program's cohort and work to make it a supportive one. Studying in international communities across three countries, I would build upon my passion and values and gain the legal expertise and experience necessary to support and contribute to organizations like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It would be an honor to join this program, to contribute my perspective on humanitarian work to this cohort, and, in the words of a graduation letter I received from the 44th President, Barack Obama, to become a leader "guided by a dedication to others and a desire to build the world as it should be."
{Note: this draft is about 1,600 words. I plan to cut it to under 1,000 and would welcome advice on what to cut. Im looking for advice how how to make this cohesive and narrative.}
Relief is meant to be free. For many of the most vulnerable, politics sets the price. My research asks how the law allows this, and how it could stop it. I am applying to the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in International Law of Security, Peace and Sustainable Development (ILSPSD) because I want to answer that question as a policy advocate for humanitarian organizations such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, or within the UN humanitarian system coordinated by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. Behind this ambition is my own research, which tracks documented accounts of international aid being restricted through political instrumentalization. My interest in humanitarian relief was sparked by countless personal accounts from friends and family in the Global South of aid recipients who found that help depended on who they were, not what they needed; it grew into a lasting commitment to human rights activism. With that commitment in mind, I took a degree in Healthcare Management while actively working on community building. I managed the international students' floor as a resident assistant, worked as a broadcast manager at the on-campus radio station, managed the LGBTQ+ and Black Student Association centers, and helped expand access to primary care for underserved residents of a rural part of my home state by renewing physician practices' federal Patient-Centered Medical Home designations, all while meeting my responsibilities as a student athlete. I wanted my work to have an international impact, and after graduating I pursued that directly.
My first step was a government-run teaching exchange program in ******* (country), where I was awarded a position as an English and international studies instructor. On the day of my arrival in ******* (city), the area was struck by multiple large earthquakes, devastating the prefecture and destroying local infrastructure. I spent my first four months there helping to coordinate disaster and rescue efforts alongside the Red Cross. During that time, I coordinated personnel rescue and recovery from rubble, confirmed the status and safety of international government workers across the prefecture via the registered phone bank, set up crowdfunding campaigns to raise donations, organized community meals at the ruins of a local landmark, and served as the area supervisor of the city's exchange language teachers. These experiences showed me firsthand how life-changing humanitarian relief is for those who need it most, and how much its success depends on coordination between governments, aid organizations, and local communities. That is the work I want to build my career on. I redirected my career path from education to project management. Coordinating global pharmaceutical clinical trials, I have spent much of my time refining my project accounting, clinical data processing, and portfolio management skills across studies in the US, Latin America, and Europe. In my free time, I returned to humanitarian relief and focused on its governance, specifically on how relief must be impartial and non-discriminatory yet remains subject to the agreement of the parties concerned. To study that tension, I built a web-based tracker of cases in which aid was delayed, rationed, or restricted, and I categorize each by how the aid was used for something other than meeting need. The cases highlight an ambiguous gray space between a lawful restriction of aid and an unlawful refusal of it. The cases highlight an ambiguous gray space between a lawful restriction of aid and an unlawful refusal of it. In my thesis, I aim to identify precisely how this gray space is exploited. What recurring legal mechanisms allow humanitarian aid to be converted into a tool of political control, and what clarification - through treaty interpretation, judicial opinion, or institutional reform - would close the gaps that sustain them?
The program's interdisciplinary design, which joins law, politics, and sustainability, builds on the cross-disciplinary training I gained through studying Healthcare Management during my undergraduate degree at ******* University. Business and Health Law Policy equipped me with legal reasoning, regulatory analysis, and compliance skills, as well as an in-depth understanding of the frameworks underpinning rights and access to care, like patient rights, informed consent, and non-discrimination. Sociology, Mass Communication, and Operations Management gave me a preliminary grounding in NGO management, from understanding how institutions treat vulnerable groups unequally to public advocacy, budgeting, and logistics. To build a legal foundation for this interest, I completed UC Louvain's edX courses in International Law and International Humanitarian Law. In International Law, I studied how treaties and custom bind states, and how state sovereignty limits what outside actors may do on a state's territory. In International Humanitarian Law, I focused on the rules governing relief. Article 70 of Additional Protocol I and Article 18 of Additional Protocol II require relief actions to be humanitarian, impartial, and conducted without adverse distinction, yet make them subject to the consent of the state concerned. I examined the ICRC's position that this consent may not be withheld arbitrarily, and the related prohibition on starving civilians as a method of warfare. I learned how to classify a conflict as international or non-international, identify which rules apply to it, and read treaty text alongside customary law. The Master's would turn this self-taught grounding into formal training, beginning at Leuphana with Public International Law and Global Security and Peaceful Dispute Settlement in International Law, and it would add practical skills through the program's legal clinics and work placements. Together, these would give me the legal background necessary for research on when the denial of humanitarian access becomes unlawful. In my second semester, the course Crisis Management in Europe and the World offered at IBEI would ground my understanding of how institutional actors react to crises and prepare me for the challenges I may face as a policymaker. Over the following summer, the Grotius Centre's summer school International Humanitarian Law in Theory and Practice would support my research interest in the protection of the civilian population, the part of humanitarian law where the rules on relief sit.
My professional and volunteer work has kept me close to questions of security and governance as well. At two global contract research organizations, I applied Good Clinical Practice, an international standard whose requirement of informed consent traces back to the Nuremberg Code, across trials in the US, Latin America, and Europe. That work trained me in the ethics of research involving people: informed consent, confidentiality, and independent review. I would bring the same standards to documenting the accounts of people affected by restricted aid. I learned how an international norm is turned into daily procedure, and how compliance is monitored across jurisdictions. Volunteering in court advocacy and peer support with a local domestic violence organization allowed me to work with survivors and to see how legal protection operates for one person at a time. At a community clinic, I helped run vaccination campaigns for uninsured residents, which showed me that access to care is a question of security as much as of health. I recently attended an international digital rights conference, where sessions on digital privacy and inclusion introduced me to how human rights law is being applied to new technology. In an operations leadership role at a nonprofit focused on AI in healthcare, I now work on that question in healthcare. This Master's will give me what my independent research lacks: formal training in how to examine and scrutinize legal policy. I hope to spend my third semester and dissertation at the University of Tartu because its track in International Law and Human Rights matches my research topic, which is when restricting aid becomes unlawful discrimination. Outside the classroom, I want to continue to understand unequal aid distribution from the bottom up, through the experience of the people it affects.
My research on the legality of humanitarian aid governance is why the International Law and Human Rights track at the University of Tartu is my first choice for Semester 3. Courses such as Protection of Marginalised Groups in International Human Rights Law and Law and Practice of the United Nations align with my focus on protecting the vulnerable under a legal framework. I am especially interested in the latter, taught by René Värk. In his 2022 analysis "Russia's Legal Arguments to Justify its Aggression Against Ukraine," he tests each of a state's legal justifications for its conduct against the actual content of the binding rule. That is the approach I aim to apply to humanitarian aid governance: examining the gap between what states and organizations claim justifies restricting or authorizing aid, and what the law actually permits. Taught in Tallinn, the track will also train me to analyze legal policy and test it against the cases I have documented. Living in the capital would also put me close to organizations where I could apply those skills, such as the Estonian Human Rights Centre and the Estonian Refugee Council, which supports displaced people in Estonia, Ukraine, and Jordan.
I do my best work in intercultural environments, where my preconceptions are tested and I come away with new perspectives. I would bring my community-building and leadership experience to this program's cohort and work to make it a supportive one. Studying in international communities across three countries, I would build upon my passion and values and gain the legal expertise and experience necessary to support and contribute to organizations like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It would be an honor to join this program, to contribute my perspective on humanitarian work to this cohort, and, in the words of a graduation letter I received from the 44th President, Barack Obama, to become a leader "guided by a dedication to others and a desire to build the world as it should be."
