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About Nicholas Bequelin
I am a human rights professional with a PhD in history and a scholarly bent. I worked about 20 years for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, most recently as Regional director for Asia.
I am currently Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, working on a project about the economic determinants of human rights violations
My interests are human rights, international relations, Asian history, and Chinese studies.
For the purpose of this podcast on the Human Rights Channel I am interested in showcasing important scholarly books in the field of human rights, at a time where there are important debates about its effects, and failures to produce effects, in the world.
There is an important stream of recent (and upcoming) books highlighting the failure of human rights to effectively address critical challenges in the world, such as poverty and inequalities, climate change, and the digital space. One issue of possible interest to the audience is the relative indifference that human practitioners show towards the scholarly literature--and the benefits of reversing this.
Nicholas Bequelin is a human rights professional with a PhD in history and a scholarly bent. He has worked about 20 years for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, most recently as Regional director for Asia. He’s currently a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School.
NBN Episodes hosted by Nicholas:
November 4, 2025
The Troublemaker
The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who becam…
February 15, 2025
Righting Wrongs
For three decades, Kenneth Roth led Human Rights Watch, transforming it from a small advocacy group into one of the most influential human rights orga…
February 4, 2025
You Must Take Part in Revolution
You Must Take Part In Revolution is a mind-bending graphic novel by award-winning journalist Melissa Chan and acclaimed dissident artist Badiucao. A n…
August 16, 2024
How to Lead Nonprofits
Non-profit organizations play an indispensable role in the world today, and are consistently rated higher than governments, the media or businesses in…
March 16, 2023
Taking Sides
Taking Sides: A Memoir about Love, War, and Changing the World (Scribe, 2023) is a personal memoir by Sherine Tadros, the United Nations Representativ…
December 16, 2022
Chasing Wrongs and Rights
Chasing Wrongs and Rights: My Experience Defending Human Rights Around the World (Simon & Schuster, 2022) by Elaine Pearson, the Asia Director at Huma…
May 23, 2022
China and the International Human Rights Regime
In China and the International Human Rights Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Rana Siu Inboden examines the evolution of China’s posture towa…
April 25, 2022
Advanced Introduction to the Politics of International Human Rights
“Human rights in public policy are constructed by diplomats and politicians in an international legislative process, not discovered amongst the clouds…
December 20, 2021
Defying the Dragon
What sequence of events led Hong Kong to lose its long-held status as a liberal enclave of China? What drove its population to rise up against its gov…
November 9, 2021
Human Rights in Thailand
Don F. Selby’s Human Rights in Thailand (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) is a rich anthropological study of the emergence of human rights in Thailand at a…