(Artwork by the late Naúl Ojeda)

The Institute for Policy Studies invites you to the 38th Annual  Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards.

5:30 pm Reception and Light Fare
7:00 pm Human Rights Awards Ceremony

Domestic Award Recipient
Robin Reineke, Colibrí Center for Human Rights

International Award Recipient
Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders

Special Recognition
Juan Méndez, Lawyer, human rights activist, and UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

You are also invited to the annual Sheridan Circle Memorial Service on September 28, 2014 at 10:00 am at 23rd St. & Sheridan Circle, Washington, DC.

Find out more and purchase tickets.

Awardee Bios

Robin Reineke is the Executive Director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona, which seeks to assist families in their search for missing loved ones and inform the public of the human rights crisis on the border. The Colibrí Center maintains the most comprehensive dataset of missing persons last seen crossing the US-Mexico border. Previously, Robin worked for the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office, where she was part of a team which pioneered efforts to identify the remains of thousands of migrants who died in Arizona’s forbidding desert while trying to cross into the United States.

The Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IMD) convenes diverse activists to bring to light and confront the specific gendered violence they face as activists and as women. IMD has been constructed from the bottom up by bringing together women leaders and organizations in El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, including those most vulnerable to violence such as rural and indigenous women defending land rights and environmental justice, lesbian and transgender activists, and feminists advocating for an end to violence.

Dr. Juan E. Méndez became a political prisoner in Argentina because of his defense, as a lawyer, of political prisoners threatened by torture and arbitrary arrest in the 1970s. Since being released and exiled as part of an international campaign to keep him from becoming one of Argentina’s tens of thousands of desaparecidos, he spent 15 years with Human Rights Watch, acted as Director or the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights, President of the International Center for Transnational Justice,  and is now UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and a visiting professor of International Human Rights Law at American University.