Rosa Celorio

Rosa Celorio is the Burnett Family Associate Dean, Distinguished Lecturer, and Director of the International Law Program at the George Washington University Law School. She has more than 20 years of experience working on international law, human rights, and women’s rights issues, including as a Senior Attorney for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and its Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (now UN Women), and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UN CEDAW Committee). She currently teaches the courses International Law, International Law of Human Rights, and International Human Rights of Women.

Dean Celorio writes frequently on issues related to international and regional human rights law, women’s rights, and intersectional discrimination. Her publications have been featured and are upcoming in journals such as the Harvard Latin American Law Review, the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, the University of Chicago Journal of International Law, the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, among other prestigious publications. Dean Celorio also authored Women and International Human Rights in Modern Times (Edward Elgar, 2022), and co-authored International Human Rights: Problems of Law, Policy, and Practice (Aspen Publishing 2023, with Professors J. Anaya, D. Shelton, and H. Hannum).

Among her recent activities, Dean Celorio is currently serving in the Executive Committee and the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law (ASIL). She also recently concluded international appointments as a Member Expert of the  Organization of American States (OAS) Special Mission to supervise the 2024 magistrate election process in Guatemala and as an Independent Expert for the Caribbean Court of Justice in matters concerning Indigenous Peoples in Belize. Dean Celorio has penned numerous case decisions and reports for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and authored several General Recommendations for the UN CEDAW Committee, including those devoted to Indigenous Women and Gender Stereotypes. Between 2013 and 2014, she taught the Human Rights Fact-Finding Practicum at Georgetown University Law Center, with a focus on statelessness, the rights of minorities, and economic, social, and cultural rights. The resulting report received the 2014 award of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for outstanding student research in the field of statelessness.

Dean Celorio was born and raised in Puerto Rico.

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