Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona
Magdalena Sepúlveda is the Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Senior Research Associate at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). From 2008 to 2014 she was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. From 2013 to 2017 she was a member of the High-Level Panel of Expert on Food Security and Nutrition of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). In 2015, she was recognised in the Global Tax 50, a list of individuals and organizations with the biggest impact on taxation worldwide. “She is also a member of the United Nations (UN) High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI Panel).
Ms. Sepúlveda’s 20-year career has focused on the intersection of poverty, development and human rights and has bridged research and policy formulation. She has worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, as a staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as the Co-Director of the Department of International Law and Human Rights of the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica and as a Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, in Geneva. She has also served as a consultant to a range of international organizations including UNWOMEN, the World Bank Group, UNHCR, UNICEF, ILO and OHCHR. She has worked with numerous NGOs in formal and informal capacities, including as a member of several boards of directors. She has published widely on human rights, fiscal policies, poverty, gender and development and has taught university courses in Latin America and the United Kingdom. She writes frequent op ed columns and her pieces have been published in more than 30 countries.
Ms. Sepúlveda holds a Ph.D. in International Law from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, an LL.M in human rights law from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom and a post graduate diploma on comparative constitutional law from the Universidad Católica de Chile.
Follow her on @Magda_Sepul