Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies

Ana Lorena Delgadillo is a Mexican human rights lawyer with over 20 years of expertise in women’s and migrants’ rights, disappearances, femicides, judicial reform, militarization, and citizen security. Through her work with public administration and civil society, Delgadillo has contributed to the development of law and policy, promoting the rights of victims of gross human rights violations in Mexico and Central America, particularly those related to enforced disappearances and femicide.

As an investigator at the Mexico City Human Rights Commission, Delgadillo promoted standards for comprehensive reparation, effective investigation, and the independence of forensic services. She worked at the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua as Director of the Truth and Justice area and later joined the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, EAAF) to undertake one of Mexico’s most high profile early femicide cases: identification of the remains of women murdered in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, Chihuahua. She served as an affidavit witness on the case González et al vs México (the “Cotton Field” case) before the InterAmerican Human Rights Court to provide evidence on the obstacles to investigating femicide cases and the difficulties families faced in their pursuit of search and justice.

As Deputy Attorney General in the Office for Attention to Victims of Mexico City, Delgadillo advanced measures for the search of missing and disappeared persons, protocols for support of victims, and participated in the drafting of the Law of Access of Women to a Life Free of Violence. With the EAAF’s Border Project, she participated in the creation of the Forensic Database for Missing Migrants in El Salvador and Oaxaca, Mexico. She also participated in drafting Mexico’s General Law for Victims.

In 2011, she founded the Foundation for Justice (Fundación para la Justicia), a regional non-governmental organization with headquarters in Mexico City and representatives in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. She served as the Executive Director for 13 years, and at FJEDD, she led national discussions on transforming Mexico’s justice system in coordination with peer civil society organisations. Together with collectives of families and other non-governmental organizations, the FJEDD advocated for more efficient public policies for the identification, search, and justice for disappeared Mexican and Central American migrants, which has resulted in the creation of national units such as the Forensic Commission, the Support Mechanism for searching and investigating cases of missing migrants, and the National Search Unit. Under her leadership, FJEDD has written and published more than 25 reports on different human rights issues.

She was a member of the Independent panel of experts to observe the election of the high courts in Guatemala. She is currently a member of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Delgadillo holds a Law Degree from Mexico’s Escuela Libre de Derecho. Her opinion is frequently heard on national and regional news analysis programs, and she is a columnist at Aristegui Noticias. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Arizona, Mexico’s National Autonomous University’s Criminal Justice Seminars, University of Villanova, University of Texas, and the University of California, Berkeley, among others.