From the beginning of her career her natural interest in human rights issues led her to remote, marginal and threatened communities all over the world; Saddam’s Iraq between the Gulf Wars, street children in post-Ceausescu Romania and Madhya Pradesh, India to witness the land-rights struggle of the indigenous Adivasi people. Karen was later commissioned to document the lives of cocoa farmers in Ghana, nomadic Arab tribes people in Israel, subsistence farmers in Mexico, the Inuit of northern Alaska and drought-afflicted villagers in Tajikistan.