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Defenders
Rapporteur
Commissioner Joel Hernández García
Rapporteur on the Rights of Human Rights Defenders and Justice Operators
Commissioner Joel Hernández García was elected on June 21, 2017, by the General Assembly of the OAS, for a period of four years that began on January 1, 2018, and ends on December 31, 2021. He holds a law degree from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico and a master's degree in international law from the New York University School of Law. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute and was a member of the Inter-American Juridical Committee during 2015-2018. He is President of the Mexican branch of the International Law Association. In the foreign service of Mexico, he rose to the rank of ambassador and served in several positions. From 2011 to 2013, he served as Permanent Representative of Mexico to the OAS. In that capacity, he chaired the working group to strengthen the IAHRS. He has been a guest professor in the fields of international law and international organizations in various academic institutions. He is a citizen of Mexico.
Former Rapporteurs
Francisco José Eguiguren Praeli
Commissioner Francisco José Eguiguren Praeli was elected Commissioner on June 16, 2015, by the OAS General Assembly for a four-year term that runs from January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2019. He has a law degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, with a master's degree in Constitutional Law and a PhD in Humanities. He was Ambassador of Peru to the Kingdom of Spain from 2012 to 2014 and Minister of Justice. He is currently a legal consultant and adviser at both the national and international level, specializing in issues related to Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and Human Rights. He is a citizen of Peru.
José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez
Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez is a citizen of Mexico. He was elected during the 39th session of the OAS General Assembly in June 2009 to a regular four-year term, which began on January 1, 2010. He took the responsibility of the Unit in January 2010, and stayed as Rapporteur when the Commission decided, in March 2011, to convert the Unit into a Rapporteurship. He is a researcher in constitutional law, human rights, the judiciary, and comparative law, among other areas, at the Legal Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Previously, he served for 16 years as a Magistrate on Mexico's highest electoral courts, first in the Central Chamber of the Federal Electoral Court and then in the Higher Chamber of the Electoral Court of the Judiciary. He earned a Doctor of Law degree with honors from UNAM, and a Master of Comparative Law from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has authored or co-authored 8 books and coordinated or edited another 15, and he has written more than 100 articles for academic publications.
Paolo Carozza, 2009
Paolo Carozza, a citizen of the United States, was a Commissioner of the IACHR from January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2009. He was Chairman of the IACHR in 2008 and First Vice-Chair in 2007; he also served as Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from March 1, 2006, to March 4, 2008. In March 2009, the IACHR decided to place Commissioner Carozza in charge of the Unit for Human Rights Defenders. He was the first Commissioner to directly oversee the Unit. In that capacity, Commissioner Carozza supervised a stage of the preparation of the follow-up report to the Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in the Americas. Paolo Carozza is an attorney who graduated from Harvard Law School, where he also was a postgraduate fellow in Public International Law. Prior to that, he attended Cambridge University on a fellowship. He is currently Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught numerous courses on human rights, international law, comparative law, and jurisprudence. He also teaches courses on European human rights law at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, and is a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He has taught master’s seminars at the European Inter-University Institute for Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice and courses on human rights at the University of Trento in Italy. He has also taught courses on philosophy of law at the University of Milan Faculty of Law, was a visiting researcher and lecturer at the University of Chile, and is the author of numerous publications.