International Human Rights Law

Joseph Berra is the Human Rights in the Americas Project Director with the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law. His teaching and research interests include immigrant rights, international human rights, and the rights of Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples in Central America. Berra coordinates projects with organizational partners in the U.S. and Latin America to engage students in human rights advocacy and the Inter-American system for human rights. Current projects include collaboration with Indigenous organizations resisting extractivist industries in their territories, litigation at the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, and research on the human rights situation of Indigenous migrants in the U.S. immigration and immigration detention systems. Before entering academia, he was a successful civil and human rights litigator. He is the past Executive Director of the Caribbean Central American Research Council and currently serves on the CCARC Board. In addition to his law degree, Berra holds an M.A. in Social Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.Div. from the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador.