Julissa Mantilla Falcón
Julissa Mantilla Falcón is an Eleanor Roosevelt Visiting Fellow with the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. Before joining HRP, Julissa was a Commissioner of the Inter American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) where she was also the Rapporteur of Women’s Rights, Migrant, Elderly and Memory, Truth and Justice. She was the President of the IACHR in 2022.
Julissa is a lawyer from the Faculty of Law of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) and she also holds a Diploma in Gender Studies from the PUCP. She completed her LL.M. at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) of the University of London with a full grant of the World Bank and the LSE in 2000. Julissa was selected to Junior Scholars at the Woodrow Wilson Center, researching on Human Rights and Foreign Policy between Peru and the USA (The George Washington University, 1998). She also was selected by the Fulbright New Century Scholar Program, to research on Truth Commissions in Latin American concerning gender and sexual violence against women based in the Washington College of Law (American University (2004 –2005).
Julissa is a professor at the Academy of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at American University (Washington, DC) as well as at the Faculty of Law, the Master’s in Gender Studies and the Master’s in Human Rights at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), where she was the winner of the Research Recognition, due to her outstanding publications and for her career as a researcher at the PUCP.
In 1999, Julissa was the Coordinator of the Area of Reproductive Rights at the Deputy for Women Rights at Peruvian Ombudsman’s Office where she was responsible of the legal team that investigated the cases of forced sterilization against women. From 2001 to 2003, she was the Gender Officer of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, where she investigated the cases of sexual violence against women during the armed conflict.
From 2008 to 2015, Julissa was an international consultant on Gender and Transitional Justice at UN Women Colombia, where she coordinated the Program on Truth, Justice and Reparations for women victims of the armed conflict.
She was elected as Amicus Curiae Foreign Jurist before the Peace Tribunal of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in Colombia.
Julissa has been part of International Missions on Promotion and Protection on Human Rights in Colombia (International Commission of Experts, United Nations, 2017) and El Salvador (International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute – IBAHRI, 2017). In 2019, she participated in the discussions of the Draft Guiding Principles for the Search for Missing Persons in Colombia, approved by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED).
Julissa is a consultant for Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras and Member of the list of experts of the Justice Rapid Response (JRR).