Clara Sandoval

Clara Sandoval is a Professor at the School of Law and Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex (currently on leave), a founding member of the Essex Transitional Justice Network at Essex, and the Director of Programmes at the Global Survivors Fund, a multistakeholder Fund established by Dr Mukwege and Nadia Murat, Nobel Peace Prize laureates (2018) to enable reparation for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.

She is an expert in transitional justice, the Inter-American System of Human Rights, reparations, and implementation of human rights orders. She enjoys both the theory and practice of human rights law and transitional justice.

Professor Sandoval has published widely on transitional justice and reparations. She is the co-author of the book Reparations for Victims of Armed Conflicts, (Third volume of the Max Planck Trialogues on the Law of Peace and War,  edited by Anne Peters and Christian Marxsen, CUP, 2020) and of the book Doctrine, Practice, and Advocacy in the Inter-American Human Rights System (OUP, 2019).

Professor Sandoval has been the acting Director of the Essex Human Rights Centre and a former Director of the LLM in International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex. 

Clara was a co-investigator of the AHRC GCRF Urgency Grant ‘Legitimacy, Accountability, Victims' Participation and Reparation in Transitional Justice Settings - Lessons from and for Colombia’. She was also a co-investigator on the ESRC research-funded project on Human Rights Law Implementation where she led work on the Americas region, focusing on Colombia, Guatemala and Canada as case studies. She has also been a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded research project on Reparations, Responsibility and Victimhood in Transitional Societies looking at reparation in six countries including Nepal, Colombia, Uganda, Northern Ireland, Peru and Guatemala.

Clara was appointed in 2017 as one of four experts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advice the ICC on various questions surrounding the award of reparations in the Jean Pierre Bemba case (Situation in the Central African Republic) and acted as an expert on reparations before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of Jineth Bedoya Lima and other v. Colombia. She also engaged in human rights litigation, training and capacity building with organisations like REDRESS. Her latest litigation before the Inter-American System was the case of Azul Rojas Marin and Other v. Peru, decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in March 2020.

Clara has also been a consultant for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for which she wrote the Special Issue on Transitional Justice and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the draft of the UN Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. More recently, in 2018–2019 Clara supported the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition in the preparation (consultation and writing) of the report on best practices and lessons learned on domestic reparation programmes. Clara also worked as a consultant for the Ministry of Justice in Colombia providing advice on transitional justice issues during the peace negotiations with the FARC.

Professor Sandoval is a qualified lawyer, has an MA and PhD from the University of Essex and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.