Juan E. Méndez

Juan E. Méndez (born December 11, 1944) is an Argentine lawyer and human rights activist known for his work on behalf of political prisoners.

Méndez was born in Lomas de Zamora, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In 1970, he received his law degree from Stella Maris University in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires province.

Early in his career, he became involved in representing political prisoners. As a result, he was arrested by the Argentine military dictatorship and subjected to torture and administrative detention for 18 months. During this period, Amnesty International adopted him as a “Prisoner of Conscience,” and in 1977, he was expelled from the country and moved to the United States.

Subsequently, Mendez worked for the Catholic Church in Aurora, Illinois, protecting the rights of migrant workers. In 1978 he joined the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the Law in Washington, D.C., and in 1982, he launched Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Americas Program. He continued to work at HRW for 15 years, becoming their general counsel in 1994. He is also a visiting scholar at American University Washington College of Law's Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

From 1996 to 1999, Mendez served as the Executive Director of the Inter-American Human Rights Institute, based in Costa Rica. He then worked as a Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame in the United States from October 1999 to 2004.

In 2001, Mendez began working for the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an international human rights NGO. He served as its president from 2004 to 2009, and currently is its President Emeritus. He is also currently the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

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