The Center for Civil and Human Rights is proud to announce its Rita Bahr Cari Memorial Fund Scholars for 2015-16. The recipients are human rights lawyers enrolled in the Center’s LL.M. Program in International Human Rights.
Luis Enrique Rosas Luengas (Mexico) earned his law degree from the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas A.C. (CIDE) in 2013. From 2009 to 2012 he worked on strategic human rights litigation at the law school's public litigation clinic, and was selected to intern at the Supreme Court of Mexico in 2012. That same year, along with other colleagues, he founded “Semillas de Justicia,” an NGO focused on strategic human rights litigation. He served as a research assistant at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University during 2013. In 2014 he served as a staff attorney at the Federal Commission of Antitrust Law in Mexico leading research against economic cartels. Immediately before enrolling at Notre Dame, he worked as an intern at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Johanna Villegas Perez (Ecuador) obtained her law degree summa cum laude from San Francisco de Quito University in 2013. As an undergraduate she represented her school at the Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition and at the “Yachay” Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Competition. Additionally, in 2014 she obtained a master’s degree in international relations at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). She has been involved in human rights topics as an intern for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and as a consultant for both the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Ecuador and for the Ministry of Justice, Human Rights and Religious Affairs. Since July 2013, she has worked as an attorney for the Legal Aid Clinic at San Francisco de Quito University.
Mr. Joseph Cari endowed the Rita Bahr Cari Memorial Fund in 2001, with additional donations, to encourage advanced studies in international human rights law. The fund provides opportunities to students outside of the United States who wish to study at the Center by assisting with tuition and living expenses.
"We are immensely grateful to Joe for his foresight and generosity in establishing this scholarship fund," says Sean O'Brien, Director of the LL.M. Program in International Human Rights Law. "Thanks to Joe -- himself a "Double Domer" -- the careers of these impressive young human rights lawyers and the trajectory of human rights in the Americas will be marked by the distinctive Notre Dame education that he helped to make possible for them."