Viviana Waisman

Viviana Waisman

Viviana Waisman is the former President and CEO of Women’s Link Worldwide, which she founded in 2001 in response to what she perceived as a glaring need to advance women’s rights in national courts by applying international and regional human rights standards. An expert in women’s rights and international human rights law, she holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, a Master’s in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Viviana has led the litigation on numerous emblematic human rights cases before national, regional and international bodies, leading to historic decisions for the protection and advancement of the rights of women and girls in Latin America, Europe and East Africa. Viviana’s contributions to the field of human rights also include working extensively as a researcher and authoring various publications on migration, protection for victims of trafficking, armed conflict and transitional justice and sexual and reproductive rights. In addition to her research work, Viviana has organized and participated in numerous international conferences and meetings related to trafficking, sexual and reproductive rights and international gender crimes.

She was part of the Third Group of Experts of the European Commission on Trafficking in Human Beings from 2011 to 2015 and was named as an Ashoka Fellow in 2016. Her family is from Argentina, she was born in New York, and she currently resides in Spain.