Lauren Seibert

Lauren Seibert is a senior researcher in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, monitoring and documenting human rights abuses against refugees, asylum seekers, and migrant populations. Special focuses of her work have included the impacts of wealthy states “externalizing”/outsourcing migration management and asylum to other countries; migration control efforts by European and African states along the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Saharan routes; US immigration detention and deportation practices; and collective expulsions of migrants by North African states.

Previously, as a consultant researcher in the Children’s Rights Division, Lauren documented armed group attacks on teachers, students, and schools in Burkina Faso. As a fellow in the Africa Division, she led research and advocacy on human trafficking and other abuses impacting talibé children in Senegal. 

Prior to Human Rights Watch, Lauren worked in communications for nonprofit organizations in the US and Kenya, spent two years in Senegal with the US Peace Corps, and volunteered with groups providing legal aid and other support to refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. She holds a bachelor's degree in Global Media from Arcadia University in the US and a Master of Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Queensland, Australia, where she was a 2018-2019 Rotary Peace Fellow.