Silvia Serrano Guzmán is the Associate Director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University.
She obtained her law degree in Colombia (Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga). She also holds an LL.M in International Legal Studies with a Certificate in International Human Rights Law (Georgetown University Law Center) and a Master’s degree in Legal Argumentation (University of Alicante, Spain).
Before joining the O’Neill Institute, she carried out different responsibilities as an attorney at the Executive Secretariat of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) where she had the responsibility to manage the portfolio of cases at the merits stage regarding the member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) and to supervise the preparation of the reports on the merits. She was also responsible for the litigation of cases submitted to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). She acted as legal counsel for the IACHR in contentious cases on a variety of issues of international human rights law including cases of grave human rights violations, transitional justice, the death penalty, the right to health, discrimination based on sexual orientation, indigenous people’s rights, human rights defenders, the rights of children and adolescents, migrants rights, gender-based violence and reproductive health. The impact of many of these cases included structural reforms in domestic legal systems, the judiciary and public policy.
She has trained state officials in different countries in international human rights law; and has carried out trainings for capacity building for human rights defenders and civil society organizations, in the use of international mechanisms for the protection of human rights. She also teaches in master’s and specialization programs in various law schools and institutions in Latin America.
