The Road to Accountability
Human rights are built into the spaces people move through. Every threshold Mary Bowers crosses or creates is a reflection of how human beings are received.
The Case for Change
Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
South Korea’s overseas adoption system sent children across borders for decades on falsified documents and without parental consent. Mary is among the claimants who brought that history before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which formally confirmed systemic human rights violations. Parallel investigations have since launched internationally. She remains an active public voice as the work of accountability and reparations moves forward.
Legislative Engagement
Mary brings children’s rights and international adoption to Korean legislators, with records preservation and state accountability at the center.
In the United States she continues the conversation with Congressional staff through reports and policy briefings.
United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances
The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances holds states accountable when people disappear inside their systems. Mary contributed testimony about the impact of plenary adoption, drawing on her own lived experience at the personal and political levels.