Almudena Bernabéu

Almudena Bernabéu has served as International Attorney for the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) since early 2002.  In that capacity Bernabéu leads CJA’s Latin America program, serving on US-based civil Alien Tort Statute litigation against human rights abusers and universal jurisdiction criminal human rights prosecutions before the Spanish National Court.  Bernabéu is also Director of CJA’s Transitional Justice Program. Bernabéu currently serves as the lead private prosecutor on two human rights cases before the Spanish National Court: one filed on behalf of survivors of the Guatemalan Genocide and the other brought against senior Salvadoran officials for the massacre of Jesuit priests in 1989.

Almudena Bernabéu has worked in human rights and international law for the past decade. She has published many articles on human rights litigation in national courts and its effectiveness in the struggle against impunity, as well as on reforming Spanish asylum and refugee law. She has lectured extensively at Universities in several countries and participated in numerous conferences throughout Europe, Latin America, and the United States and has conducted numerous trainings for lawyers and government prosecutors. Bernabeu is also vice-president of the Spanish Association for Human Rights (www.apdhe.org), and serves as an advisor at the Human Rights Clinic at Santa Clara University.  Bernabéu is a member of the advisory board of the Peruvian Institute of Forensic Anthropology (EPAF) (www.epafperu.org), a forensic group providing evidence on human rights violations investigations and prosecutions. In 2012, Bernabeu won the prestigious Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize, and the Yo Dona Magazine Award. She was nominated as one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2012, and just received the SCEVOLA award for ethics and professional excellence.

Ms. Bernabéu holds an LLM degree from the University Of Valencia School Of Law, where she specialized in Public International Law. Trained in Spanish and US law, she is a member of the Valencia and Madrid Bar Associations and the American Bar Association. 

Return to Tribute to Justice: Remembering 40 years September 9th 2013.