Mario Joseph

Mario Joseph
Mario Joseph in January 2010
Nationality	Haitian
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure École de Droit des Gonaïves
Occupation	Lawyer
Organization	Bureau des Avocats Internationaux
Known for	Human rights work
Awards	Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Award (2009) Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize (2009)

Mario Joseph is a Haitian human rights lawyer. Since 1996, he has led the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince, which represents political prisoners, poor people, and victims of political violence. In 2006, The New York Times called Joseph "Haiti's most prominent human rights lawyer".

Joseph received degrees from Haiti's École Normale Supérieure and Gonaives Law School. He then worked on human rights cases for the Catholic Church's Peace and Justice Commission before joining the BAI in 1996.

Joseph was the lead lawyer for the victims in the prosecution of the BAI's most successful case, the Raboteau Massacre trial. The trial was described by a United Nations expert as "the longest and most complex" in the history of the Haitian judicial system. After six weeks of trial ending in November 2000, the Raboteau Massacre jury convicted 53 defendants for a 1994 attack on a pro-democracy neighborhood, 37 of whom were convicted in absentia. The Court also ordered that the defendants pay civil damages of 1 billion gourdes (roughly $43 million USD).

Three former members of the military high command were later deported from the U.S. to Haiti to face charges in Raboteau, including former Assistant Commander-in-Chief Jean-Claude Duperval, who had worked at Disney World for five years after leaving Haiti. According to the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), Duperval was the highest-ranked soldier ever deported from the U.S. to face human rights charges.

Joseph helped the Center for Justice & Accountability pursue other perpetrators of the Raboteau Massacre in U.S. courts. On 16 May 2008, these efforts resulted in a damage recovery of more than $400,000 USD from former Col. Carl Dorélien, who had recently won the Florida State Lottery. The same year, Joseph also provided an affidavit against Emmanuel Constant, a former paramilitary leader and convicted Raboteau perpetrator, when Constant was on trial for mortgage fraud in New York.