Paula Gaviria Betancur was appointed as a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement in December 2019. A lawyer and specialist in journalism with postgraduate training in public opinion and political marketing, Ms. Gaviria is a former Presidential Advisor on Human Rights in her home country Colombia and is presently the Director of the peace-building foundation Compaz Fundación. She participated actively in the elaboration of the chapter on victims’ rights of the Final Peace Agreement signed between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP for which she promoted a leading role for and inclusion of the voices of the victims of the internal armed conflict themselves in the dialogue process. She launched and for four years directed the Victims Unit, a government entity in charge of reparations for the eight million people affected by the conflict. For this work, she was awarded by the World Bank its José Edgardo Campos Collaborative Leadership for 2016.
Ms Gaviria has led initiatives with civil society organizations such as Fundación Social in which she directed the area of Advocacy in Public Policy and advised on Human Rights and Peace. She has also served as Head of the Communications Division of the Constitutional Court, as Private Secretary of the Ombudsman and directed its National Directorate for the Promotion and Dissemination of Human Rights. She has followed specialized human rights courses such as the Transitional Justice Fellowship in South Africa and the International Visitors Leadership Program with the US Department of State.
