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Between 1989 and 2023, more than 350 advocates from nearly 100 countries have attended the program. HRAP participants have ranged from early-career advocates who cut their teeth in very urgent human rights situations to mid-career advocates who have founded organizations. HRAP alumni have served as UN special rapporteurs, in the ministries of their governments, and at leading human rights organizations around the globe. They have been recognized with honors including the Rafto Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, the highest acknowledgment from the international human rights community.
Below are the biographies of current Advocates and descriptions by select alumni as to why they became human rights advocates.
To see a list of additional past Advocates click here.
To read about more about the work of our Advocates click here .
Colombia, 2003
Founder, and Director , Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas
2003 Advocate Patricia Guerrero is the founder and director of Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas (LMD) an independent, nonprofit organization that advocates for the restitution of the fundamental rights for displaced women who lost their rights due to armed conflict.
As a lawyer committed to the defense of human rights, she has represented the organization in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Colombian Government. Additionally, she is the director of the Gender, Democracy and Human Rights Observatory, which undertakes research on social and legal issues in Colombia.
Guerrero was also responsible for the construction of the City of Women (Ciudad de las Mujeres) in Turbaco, which offers housing to displaced women and their families. In recognition of her work, Guerrero received the Human Rights Prize awarded by Sofasa Renault in Colombia, a Special Mention from the Jury of the National Peace Prize in Colombia, a Special Mention from the Jury of the King of Spain Human Rights Award, and recognition from the U.S. Congress. She serves on the ad hoc advisory committee of approximately 20 organizations and individuals as part of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict with the Nobel Women’s Initiative. She was awarded the American Bar Association Human Rights Award in 2017.
When reflecting about her experience at HRAP, Guerrero writes: “It changed my life forever and the life of displaced women in Colombia. I will always be grateful for the hospitality of Columbia University, which I consider my alma mater to the people who fought for a Colombian woman to take part in the HRAP in 2003 to Professor J. Paul Martin who always believed in me to SIPA students who supported my projects and made them viable to Holly Bartling who taught me how to look for money to promote women’s rights to all the good professors of the program and to the rest of the advocates, especially Lydia Alpizar with who I maintain a deep, unshakeable friendship. I also wish to thank my beloved daughters Juliana, Juanita, and Silvana Brugman Guerrero, my granddaughter Micaela, and my husband Aris. Finally, I wish to acknowledge and thank those who continue to believe in the great potential of thousands of anonymous human rights defenders in the world.”
—Article composed by Marta Garnelo Caamano, ISHR Intern, June 2011
—Updated by Claire Kozik, Program Assistant, Summer 2018
