Jaime Ordonez

Dr. Jaime Ordóñez "is director of Centro Estudios Para el Futuro, a San-Jose-based institute that promotes democracy, human rights, and state reform in Central America. He is also director of the department of state theory at the University of Costa Rica’s Law School. From 2000 to 2001, he was Costa Rica’s special ambassador to the Organization of American States, where he directed its country’s negotiations related to the Inter-American Democratic Charter. He has taught constitutional and human rights law at a number of U.S. universities, including Columbia, Tulane, and the University of Maryland at College Park. In addition to writing over ten books in Spanish, including Democracy Without Rules (2004), Security, Military Forces, and Human Rights in Latin America (1999), and Human Rights: Indigenous Peoples (1995), he also has drafted ombudsman laws for Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Uruguay. From March to July 2007 Dr. Ordóñez was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at NED, where he continued to work on compiling the 2007 Central American Report on Legal and Institutional Governance."