David Padilla

Throughout his 27-year career with the Organization of American States, Padilla shuttled around the hemisphere, monitoring and fighting for human rights in 35 OAS member nations, predominantly in Central and South America. Since retiring from his long-time position as assistant executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, he’s shifted his focus to Africa and Asia as a consultant and Fulbright senior specialist. In the past several years, Padilla has completed three Fulbright visiting professorships at the Center for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and will soon depart for a half-year stint in the Philippines, where he will be teaching international human rights law at Silliman University in Dumaguete.

The Detroit native says that his passion for human rights is a vital part of his makeup. “A strong social conscience is an important part of my family tradition,” he says, explaining that his grandfather, a Mexican immigrant, helped feed the poor in Detroit, and that his father, uncle, and many of his 10 siblings have been involved in community service. After completing his JD at the University of Detroit Law School in 1969, Padilla and his wife served in the Peace Corps, spending two years in Venezuela. He joined OAS as a legal officer in 1975, after earning an MA in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania (he also holds an MPA from Harvard University), and rose steadily through the ranks.

“Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I was involved in the struggle for human rights, organizing and participating in OAS on-site investigations in Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada, and representing the commission before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica,” he says.” “It was a real privilege to be involved in trying to alleviate human suffering and to be a witness to the history of our hemisphere in that period.”

Padilla now enjoys sharing his decades of experience with college students around the globe. Through his Fulbright visiting professorships, he’s taught international human rights law to LLB and LLM students from all over Africa at the University of Pretoria. He’s also served as a visiting lecturer of inter-American human rights law at the University of Suriname, St. Thomas University Law School in Miami, and the University of Amsterdam. “Human rights are universal,” he states. “I believe in what I’m teaching and find that my students are tremendously interested in and enthusiastic about strengthening respect for human rights around the world, which is very reassuring.”

Retirement has afforded Padilla the time to take on some captivating pro bono human rights cases as well. He is currently hard at work representing a tribe of Sarimaka Maroons in Suriname. “They are a unique and proud people who descended from escaped African slaves and fled into the interior of Suriname, where they eventually gained their independence,” explains Padilla. “For centuries, they collectively had exclusive use of their land, where they served as devout custodians of the environment, but, since Surinamese law only provides for private land ownership, the government has recently been granting concessions to international companies to cut down timber in their forests. We’ve brought a case against the Surinamese government challenging these practices, and I anticipate being involved in future cases like this to help draw international attention to these injustices and help the people in their quest for justice.”

On a more personal level, Padilla now represents one of his former University of Pretoria students, Gabrielle Shumba, who worked as a human rights attorney in Zimbabwe. “He was arbitrarily detained, hooded, taken to a clandestine location by government thugs, held incommunicado, and tortured, before ultimately receiving political asylum in South Africa,” says Padilla. “We’ve brought a human rights violation case before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.”

Throughout his decades of globetrotting, Padilla has credited GW Law with giving him a “solid grounding” in international law. “The training I received at GW was very important to my professional development,” says Padilla, who pursued his LLM at night while working days at OAS, just two blocks from Foggy Bottom. “It exposed me to the history, reach, and potential of international law. I hope more GW graduates will consider a career in human rights law. They won’t get rich, but they will be doing something that’s important and the moral rewards are extraordinary.”