Alda Facio

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Alda Facio
Born
Alda Facio Montejo

(1948-01-26) 26 January 1948 (age 76)
New York City, United States
NationalityCosta Rican
Alma mater New York University
University of Costa Rica
Occupation(s)Lawyer and writer
PredecessorPatricia Olamendi Torres
Successor Dorothy Estrada-Tanck as UN expert
Parent(s) Gonzalo Facio Segreda
María Lilia Montejo Ortuño
Relatives Giannina Facio Franco (half-sister)

Alda Facio Montejo (born 26 January 1948) is a Costa Rican feminist jurist, writer, teacher and international expert in gender and human rights in Latin America. She is one of the founding members of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court. [1] Since 1991, she has been the Director of Women, Justice and Gender, a program within the United Nations Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD) and vice president of the Justice and Gender Foundation. She was also one of the founding members of Ventana in the 1970s, one of the first feminist organizations in her native Costa Rica. [2] In 2014, she was chosen to be one of the five United Nations special rapporteurs for the Working Group against Discrimination against Women and Girls. [3] [4] Her term came to and end in 2020 and she was succeeded by Dorothy Estrada-Tanck. [5]

Biography

Alda Facio was born in New York City in the United States of America on 26 January 1948 to lawyer, politician and diplomat Gonzalo Facio Segreda (1918-2018) and his first wife María Lilia Montejo Ortuño. [6] She has a sister, Sandra and a brother, Rómulo. She also has three younger half-sisters through her father's second marriage: Giannina, Ana Catalina and Carla (their mother is Ana Franco Calzia). During the 1960s, when she was 17 or 18, Facio discovered feminism and would later tell the Carnegie Council that her reason for becoming a feminist was that "feminists and feminism gives you strength knowing that you're part of a global movement is something that gives you a lot of energy to move forward." [7]

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References

  1. "Alda Facio". justassociates.org. JASS (Just Associates). Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  2. "Alda Facio Montejo". inamu.go.cr (in Spanish). INAMU. Retrieved 29 June 2016.
  3. "Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice - Members". United Nations.
  4. Chung, Christine (27 September 2016). "The U.N.'s Working Group on Discrimination Against Women, Explained". News Deeply. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  5. "Current and former mandate holders". OHCHR. 1 May 2024. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  6. "Amelia Barquero, Thelma Curling y Alda Facio fueron premiadas por el Inamu en la edición 2015 de este reconocimiento". gobierno.cr (in Spanish). San José: Costa Rica. 16 March 2015. Archived from the original on 3 October 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  7. Facio Montejo, Alda. "How the Seed Was Planted". carnegiecouncil.org (in Spanish). Carnegie Council . Retrieved 27 July 2016.