A woman stands in front of a banner reading “Impunity” in Guatemala City. Photo: REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez

Please join this conversation the past four decades of work to end impunity in Latin America with longtime human rights champions. As the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) turns 40 and the Institute for Policy Studies enters its sixth decade, we are more aware than ever of the importance of sharing lessons from the past to inform the next generation fights for justice.

Speakers:

• Dr. Juan E. Méndez is the recipient of the 2014 Letelier-Moffitt Special Recognition Award. A former political prisoner in Argentina, he went on to fight impunity at Human Rights Watch, the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights, and the International Center for Transnational Justice. He is now UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
• Rev. William Wipfler is the former director of the National Council of Churches’ (NCC) Latin American Department and a member of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards Selection Committee. During his 25-year career with the NCC, Wipfler, a former missionary to the Dominican Republic, was a leader in a nationwide effort to denounce repression and torture in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Central America.
• His Excellency Francisco Altschul, Ambassador of El Salvador to the U.S., resigned from a post in the Ministry of Planning in 1980 in protest over political repression. He moved to Mexico City, where he became a spokesperson for the Democratic Revolutionary Front of El Salvador, the political wing of the guerilla movement, FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). He later moved to Washington, DC to provide information and analysis to U.S. policymakers regarding the brutal civil war in his home country.
• Joy Olson, Executive Director of WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America), is a leading advocate for human rights in the Americas. Under her direction, WOLA is pioneering new approaches to human rights advocacy, developing intermestic programing and addressing the problems of violence and organized crime from a human rights perspective.