University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor Jorge Barrera-Rojas was elected to the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee by the United Nations Human Rights Council. He will serve on the advisory committee until 2029 as a representative from Chile for the Latin American and Caribbean States region.
“This election is an honor I receive with deep gratitude, to the members of the Council and to Chile for placing its confidence in me,” Barrera-Rojas said. “It also carries a special responsibility, as I am the first Chilean to serve on the Advisory Committee in more than a decade."
The Human Rights Council Advisory Committee is composed of 18 experts from around the globe and functions as a think tank. It offers research-based counsel to the Human Rights Council, which is an intergovernmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and making recommendations on them.
Barrera-Rojas, who is from Chile, joined St. Thomas Law in May 2026. His scholarship, in part, is focused on international human rights law.
“My work has always started from a simple idea,” he said. “The dignity of each person is first protected by those who know them best, their families, their schools, their faith communities, their neighborhoods. That idea is deeply connected to the St. Thomas mission and its call to the common good, and it is the spirit in which I will work alongside my colleagues in Geneva.”
Previously, Barrera-Rojas was an Olin-Searle Fellow and Associate Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law and the Robert E. Rodes Jr. Fellow in Law at Notre Dame Law School. He served as a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Alberto Borea of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Barrera-Rojas earned his law degree at the Universidad de Chile. He also holds an LL.M. from the UCLA School of Law, a J.S.D. from Notre Dame Law School and a Ph.D. from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
