Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. It works to unite people in the common cause of defending human rights and promoting liberal democracy. Its mission is to ensure that freedom is both preserved and promoted around the world. Javier El-Hage, the Chief Legal Officer and Head of the Center for Law and Democracy at HRF, referring to his experience as a lawyer in the human rights field, will give an account of the many challenges and rewards that come with human rights legal practice.

Javier El-Hage, the Chief Legal Officer at HRF, has 8 years of experience as an international lawyer filing individual complaints and amicus curiae briefs before judicial and semijudicial bodies at the UN and Inter-American levels, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. El-Hage’s roles at HRF include carrying out research in the areas of international democracy law and international human rights law with a focus on freedom of expression. In 2010, El Hage published the book “The Facts and the Law Behind the Democratic Crisis of Honduras,” which provides working definitions of the terms “coup d’état” and “erosion of democracy” under the Inter-American legal system. Both terms have been since adopted by the Honduran Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2011 and the Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General in 2016.

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