Erica Gaston

Erica Gaston is a program officer for the Afghanistan-Pakistan Regional Policy Initiative of the Open Society Institute. In addition to monitoring the conduct of warring parties, much of her work focuses on supporting civil society involvement in these issues.

Prior to her work with OSI, she was the Afghanistan research fellow for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, whose mission is to encourage warring parties to provide compensation, victim assistance, recognition or other redress to victims of conflict.

Gaston graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007. She worked as a researcher and writer on several advocacy projects with the Harvard Human Rights Program and Human Rights Watch. She also helped provide research and analysis for the United Nations Committee Against Torture and Senator Richard J. Durbin's Judiciary Committee Staff.

In addition to her human rights work, Gaston has published articles related to the accountability of private security companies, issues and problems inherent in the humanitarian project, and the improvement of emergency preparedness for homeland security and counter-terrorism purposes. She graduated with a BA in international relations, with a specialization in international security, from Stanford University.