Ramón Cadena
Ramón Cadena is a lawyer and human rights defender from Guatemala. He has spent more than forty years of his professional career searching for detained or disappeared persons and ensuring judicial independence in Central America. He has worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with refugees/returnees from Central America, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at its headquarters in Central America, and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) as Director for Central America. He was an ad hoc judge before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the Dos Erres case, and an expert witness for the Public Prosecutor's Office in various cases, including the Genocide Case and other cases of criminalisation of social protest.
Ramón Cadena has also worked with the Indigenous Peoples of Central America, advising them on how to realise their right to access justice.
Since Otto Pérez Molina assumed the role of President in January 2012, cases of harassment and threats against HRDs have been on the rise. Human rights defenders (HRDs) in Guatemala are subjected to death threats, physical attacks, acts of harassment, surveillance, stigmatisation, judicial harassment, arbitrary detention, forced disappearance and killings. Many of the violations are carried out by clandestine security structures and illegal groups. The exceptionally high level of impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators increases the risk exponentially for HRDs.
