The Center for Reproductive Rights announced today the appointment of Luisa Cabal as Director of the International Legal Program. Ms. Cabal has been Deputy Director of the program since June 2004 and Legal Adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean since 1998. During that time, she played a leading role in the growth and development of the organization’s international law reform program.

"Luisa brings outstanding skills as an international lawyer and advocate to our mission of using the law to advance reproductive freedom as a fundamental right that governments are obligated to protect, respect, and fulfill," said Nancy Northup, President of the Center. "She assumes her new role of director at an exciting time when the Center is using international human rights treaties to enforce reproductive rights, providing our expertise in international and comparative law to policymakers and advocates working on progressive reform in their own countries, and training a cadre of lawyers all over the world to take up the cause of reproductive rights."

In her six years at the Center, Ms. Cabal has pioneered the Center’s first international litigation efforts, positioning reproductive rights issues on the agenda of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. She also designed and co-coordinated the first comparative regional study in Latin America on the jurisprudence of the region’s highest level courts. She developed lawyer training projects, whose graduates continue to work on reproductive rights in countries such as México, Perú and Colombia. And she has worked on the creation of a network of Latin American law professors who are integrating reproductive rights into law school curricula in the region.

"These are challenging times for reproductive rights. Women around the world continue to lack control over their reproductive lives, and governments are failing to deliver reproductive health services," said Ms. Cabal. "I feel very lucky to lead a team of committed and talented lawyers who are working every day to ensure that international legal standards and laws protect and guarantee women’s reproductive choices, wherever they live in the world."

In 1994, Ms. Cabal obtained her law degree, with honors, from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She then worked in Colombia on women’s rights, human rights, and community empowerment projects in the office of the President of Colombia, the UN Development Program, and a local NGO.

She received her Master of Laws from Columbia University School of Law in 1997, with a concentration in human rights, gender and the law, and international law. Prior to joining the Center in 1998, she was a foreign associate in the Latin American Practice Group at Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, LLP.

Learn more about Luisa Cabal.