Sofía Galván Puente

Sofía Galván Puente is Senior Advisor and Senior Clinical Supervisor at University Network for Human Rights. Galván is an attorney and expert in human rights standards and practice and a specialist in the Inter-American system for the protection of human rights. She has particular expertise in the rights of persons deprived of liberty and those with disabilities. Galván has researched, documented and written or co-written dozens of studies, reports and articles on human rights abuses. 

Prior to joining the University Network, Sofía Galván served for a decade as a human rights specialist in the Executive Secretariat of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).  At the IACHR, the most recent position Galván held was Coordinator of the Human Rights Monitoring Section that oversaw the rights of persons deprived of liberty, the rights of migrants and the rights of children. Galván also oversaw rights monitoring for 17 countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Cuba, Haiti, the United States and countries in the Anglophone Caribbean. Galván spent five years coordinating the work of the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Persons Deprived or Liberty.

Prior to joining the staff at the IACHR, Galván was the Director for Mexico and Central America of Disability Rights International. In addition to establishing the regional office, she designed litigation and impact strategies at the national and international level to strengthen protections for persons with disabilities. Galván served as a visiting professional with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Galván studied at Mexico’s leading law school, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and earned her LL.M. at the University of Notre Dame (magna cum laude), where she received a full scholarship. Galván is also a professor of penitentiary law in the master's degree program at the University of Barcelona, and lecturer at the Summer School on “Human Rights and Persons Deprived of Liberty”, organized by the Ghent University (Belgium). Galván has given talks and conferences in scores of events in the United States, Latin America and Europe.