Catalina Martinez

Catalina Martinez is the Regional Director for Latin America & the Caribbean for the Center for Reproductive Rights. In this role she oversees the organization’s overall strategies in the region on litigation, advocacy and communication work and is responsible for mobilizing resources to ensure successful delivery and sustainability of the Center’s mandate.

In her role as regional director, she has been involved in securing and contributing to the recognition of reproductive rights in the region. She conducted an intervention in 2017 on behalf of the Center before the Constitutional Tribunal in Chile in the historic hearing that decriminalized abortion under three circumstances. Along with her team she also developed the Center’s work on reproductive violence in Colombia, seeking recognition by transitional justice mechanisms of reproductive rights violations committed during the Colombian armed conflict. She was part of the team that litigated the landmark case of Paola Guzmán Albarracín before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2020, the first decision that recognized the right to sexual and reproductive education for girls and adolescents at the regional level. Finally, she has been actively involved in litigation and advocacy work to secure the freedom of women unjustly imprisoned for abortion-related matters in El Salvador.

Catalina joined the Center from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where she worked as a human rights specialist in the friendly settlements group and the registry section. Before joining the Commission, she was a field legal officer at the United Nations Development Programme in Montes de María, Colombia, in its program on peace and reconciliation. Prior to that, she worked as an intern for the International Federation for Human Rights in Paris and for the UN Human Rights Council in Colombia and Paris.

Catalina received Master’s degrees in international affairs from Sciences Po Paris and in international law and international organizations from Paris University Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Catalina’s native language is Spanish. She is also fluent in French.