Fanny C. Gómez-Lugo
Fanny C. Gómez-Lugo (she/her) is a queer feminist, Venezuelan lawyer with over sixteen years of experience in advocacy, litigation, movement building, and teaching in the fields of international human rights law, reproductive rights, sexual rights, and LGBTQI+ rights. She is the Director of Research and Advocacy Programs at WEC, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center (GULC), and an expert in asylum cases in the U.S. for LGBTQI+ people.
Before joining WEC, she was the Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at Synergía - Initiatives for Human Rights, conducting advocacy and capacity building on LGBTQI+ issues in Africa and the Americas. Before this, she worked as the human rights specialist coordinating the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Persons (LGBTI) at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Organization of American States (OAS), for five years. She has worked at the IACHR since July 2007, where she started working for the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women. Fanny has also worked with Human Rights Watch and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Fanny was born and raised in Caracas and is a law graduate from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Venezuela) (Juris Doctor equivalent). She earned a Master of Laws (LL.M.) with a concentration in international law from McGill University, Canada. On a scholarship from the University of Chile, she pursued graduate studies in "Human Rights and Women: Theory and Practice." In 2008, she completed the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program (WLPPFP) at Georgetown University.
She is a member of the international Advisory Board at Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She is a member of the Network of LGBT Litigants of Latin America and the Caribbean and a consultant on gender and sexuality with the United Nations. She has authored several publications on sexuality, gender, health, and human rights. She speaks Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.