Lucky Karim is a human rights activist and Refugee Women for Peace and Justice (RWPJ) founder and executive director. From Burma (Myanmar), Lucky is a member of the Rohingya community with six years of lived experience in Bangladesh refugee camps. She has also worked for a number of international organizations and helps translate the needs of her people.
Lucky was forced to flee her home in August 2017 at the age of fourteen after the genocide against her community was committed by the military. She is the first Rohingya girl able to communicate directly with policymakers, INGO leaders, and government leaders in English. She also testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S. Congress in 2023. Since then, she has been at almost every table discussing Burma- or Rohingya-related issues, including at the UN in New York and Geneva, with the Bangladesh government in Cox’s Bazar, and on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
Lucky was resettled to the United States in 2022 and is now a permanent resident. She is currently a fellow at Refugees International.
RWPJ Field Team
Field coordinators, facilitators, and trainers in the refugee camps are high school graduates from Myanmar with experience working for International Humanitarian Organizations for over six years.
RWPJ Volunteers
Our fifty women volunteers are under 30 and from 25 different blocks in the camps. They escaped genocide in 2017 in Myanmar and are now living in the mega camps. Many were never allowed to attend school or even hold a pen.
RWPJ Program Officer
Tom Clowes, our Program Officer, is an experienced non-profit administrator. In 2011, he founded Crossing Borders Music, a multicultural organization of color which shares the stories and music of those whose voices are suppressed. In 2015 he became the organization’s first Executive Director, driving its dramatic and sustained growth into an internationally-recognized, professionally-managed arts, culture, and education organization. Through CBM, he’s worked with many musicians forced to flee their homes, including Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, the US, and Canada.