Magdalena Sepúlveda

Dr. Magdalena Sepúlveda is the Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Senior Research Associate at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). She is also a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). In 2015, she was recognised in the Global Tax 50, a list of individuals and organizations with the biggest impact on taxation worldwide.

Dr. Sepúlveda’s 20-year career has focused on the intersection of poverty, development and human rights and has bridged research and policy formulation. She has worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, as a staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, as the Co-Director of the Department of International Law and Human Rights of the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica and as a Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, in Geneva. She has published widely on human rights, fiscal policies, poverty, gender and development and has taught university courses in Latin America and the United Kingdom. She writes frequent op ed columns and her pieces have been published in more than 30 countries.

Dr. Sepúlveda holds a Ph.D. in International Law from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, an LL.M in human rights law from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom and a post graduate diploma on comparative constitutional law from the Universidad Católica de Chile.