Claudia Guadamuz is a Senior Legal Advisor on ICNL’s Latin America and the Caribbean team. She leads ICNL’s work in Mexico, Central America, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Chile where she provides technical assistance to civil society organizations and governments to promote enhancements to the regulatory framework for the civic sector so they can exercise their rights to associate, to assemble freely, to express their opinions and to participate in policymaking.

Ms. Guadamuz has contributed to significant improvements for the conditions of CSOs’ work e.g. through the creation of a Directorate for the Promotion of CSOs’ activities in Honduras, improvements to the registration rules for CSOs in Peru, and the creation of dialogues spaces for CSO and government officials to advance legal reforms in El Salvador and Colombia. Her work has also focused on developing tailored capacity building programs for public officials on the right of CSOs and on self-regulation systems for the civic sector. She organized a regional conference for experts from 13 Latin American countries on digital space and the protection of the freedoms of association and peaceful assembly. She edited the compilation of all experts’ inputs that informed the Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association’s report to the Human Rights Council on this topic. Ms. Guadamuz co-authored Challenges and Opportunities to Promote More Enabling Legal Environments for Civil Society Organizations: A Look at Six Latin American Countries.

Prior to joining ICNL in 2013, Ms. Guadamuz specialized in civil society strengthening and Government-CSO relations in various posts with the Nicaraguan Government and international cooperation agencies.  She provided consultancy services for the Embassy of Netherlands in Nicaragua and international cooperation agencies such as the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the World Bank. Ms. Guadamuz has a Master’s in Public Policy and has ten years’ experience as a university professor teaching political science.