María Luisa serves as Senior Legal Program Officer for Latin America at the Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights, where she leads litigation strategies, international advocacy, and capacity building in collaboration with partner organizations in the region.
She holds a law degree and a degree in social anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid and a master’s degree in international human rights law from the United Nations University for Peace. She has more than a decade of experience in defending and promoting human rights in Latin America, and her career combines strategic litigation before the Inter-American and Universal Human Rights Systems, academic research, university teaching, and support for communities, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders.
Before joining Race and Equality, she was a lawyer for the Mesoamerica Program at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), where she was in charge of strategic litigation in cases with high regional impact. She has also taught at the Austral University of Chile, at the Transdisciplinary Center for Environmental Studies and Sustainable Human Development (CEAM-UACh) and at the University of Costa Rica, contributing an interdisciplinary approach that combines law, anthropology, and environmental justice.
She has also worked as an independent consultant for international and civil society organizations, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), OXFAM, and Women’s Link Worldwide. Her areas of expertise include gender and intersectionality, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights (DESCA), racial and environmental justice, and the rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants.
