Protection

Political scientist with a Master of Arts International Relations/Political Science from the University of Geneva and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Graduate Institute) in Switzerland. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in "Human Rights and Democratisation Processes" from the Human Rights Centre of the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile in association with the ICTJ - International Centre for Transitional Justice.

She was born in Bogotá, Colombia and completed her university studies in Geneva, Switzerland where she lived and worked for fifteen years. Her professional work has focused on international cooperation (programme and projects management, NGO director); research on related issues; and advocacy for peace, development and human rights. She worked at the Delegation of the European Union in Colombia as Cooperation Officer for Human Rights and Focal Point for Children and Armed Conflict for nine years, and presently I is an independant senior consultant on international cooperation, human rights and peacebuilding.

I am a human rights practitioner with more than twenty years of experience in post conflict countries as well as in countries in the EU accession process.
My main areas of expertise are post conflict housing, land and property rights, displaced persons, refugees and migrants’ rights, rule of law, legal aid, transitional justice. I have gathered also a significant experience in monitoring and supervising elections both at the field and central level. 
Thanks to these experiences, I developed a series of skills like human rights monitoring and reporting, providing expert advice to governmental bodies, drafting legal documents, advocacy with national authorities, designing projects and tools  for the purpose of protecting human rights.
I have worked extensively in the Western Balkans, mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and  Kosovo and for shorter period of times in Georgia, Ukraine, Rwanda, Jordan and Colombia. Besides these countries, I have recently worked in the United Kingdom as Deputy Director at Europe Regional Office of Amnesty International. 

I worked for international organisations, international NGOs, as well as private companies.  The roles that I covered were characterized by an increasing level of responsibilities and complexity. For these reasons, I moved from human rights officer to legal advisor, to team leader and in my latest assignment I was deputy director for Europe for Amnesty International. During these years I was also happy to work as a free-lance consultant and whenever possible offer my pro bono support to NGOs and other civil society organisations.  

In my work, but also in my life, I am committed to a continuous personal growth, seeking new challenges I am always eager to expand my knowledge and learn new things. For these reasons, I value direct experience, gathered at the field level, which delivers in depth knowledge of the current situation. Experience needs to be combined with the application of existing standards and principles. At the same time humor, kindness, tolerance and a good amount of social skills are also a key features of my professional approach and of my personality.