ANETTE MARTÍNEZ-ORABONA

Annette Martínez-Orabona is the Chair of Board of Directors of Amnesty International Puerto Rico and an international human rights lawyer and activist with outstanding experience in national and international human rights protection systems. Currently, her work focuses on accompanying vulnerable communities and individuals to improve access to economic, social and environmental rights in Puerto Rico. Under her leadership, a coalition of more than 40 organizations produced several reports detailing the effects of austerity policies on human rights in Puerto Rico.

Martínez-Orabona has also coordinated the presentation of written and oral testimonies before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, as well as before special procedures of the United Nations on the current humanitarian and human rights crisis following Hurricane Maria. She is the Director of the Caribbean Institute of Human Rights, an organization dedicated to promoting the protection of human rights in the Caribbean region. In this capacity, she has developed advocacy and research initiatives on the rights of migrants and their descendants in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. She also works as a professor of law and supervisor of the Human Rights Clinic at the Faculty of Law of the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico.

Prior to founding the Institute, Martínez-Orabona worked as a lawyer at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), where she handled cases of statelessness, enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial executions, the rights of Guantánamo detainees and discriminatory policies in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and the United States (among other states). Martínez-Orabona is currently a member of the boards of directors of Amnesty International-Puerto Rico Chapter, and of the Network of the Americas on Nationality and Statelessness. She received her law degree from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, and also has a Master's degree in International Public Law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA.