Anne Baltazar

Mary Anne K. Baltazar grew up in Sabah surrounded by xenophobic sentiments against the undocumented and stateless community. Knowing she could do more to spur acceptance of the community, her first step in non-profit and human rights works started with Good Shepherd Services. The organisation works on issues of sexual gender-based violence, and human trafficking among others.

Her passion led to establish Advocates for Non-discrimination and Access to Knowledge (ANAK) in 2017, advocating for the rights of non-citizens children in Sabah.

Anne is also committed to conducting research and communicating her findings to support policy reforms. In 2014, She presented her paper on human trafficking for the Symposium of Young People against Slavery at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City. In 2017, she was awarded a research grant by SHAPE-SEA. The grant culminated in a research paper entitled Children at Risk of Statelessness and their Constraints to Citizenship.

She is currently a Fellow at the UMS-UNICEF Communications for Development Research Unit. Her fields of research include statelessness, legal identification documentation and migration, particularly among women and children.

Anne is a member of the Southeast Asian Human Rights and Peace Studies Network (SEAHRN), an alumnus of the Community Solutions Programme (CSP), Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative (YSEALI) and the Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI). She also heads the Social Development Unit in the Sabah WWF office.

For more info on ANAK, click here.

Making an impact to me is being able to change the lives of the most vulnerable in our society for the better, and to be able to influence others to also play a part in that change. so that everyone regardless of background would be able to live a life of dignity.