Sergio is an interdisciplinary human rights activist and researcher, who is passionate about forging alliances across movements and geographies to advance economic justice at a global level. He currently works as International Policy and Advocacy Lead at the Tax Justice Network (TJN).
Between 2016-2021, Sergio worked at the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), an international human rights organisation that uses human rights as a tool to challenge economic injustice and catalyse action towards a new vision of the economy centred on values of care, justice, and solidarity. As a researcher at CESR, Sergio contributed to action-oriented collaborative projects on issues such as the impact of austerity policies in Brazil and Ecuador; access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in Spain; intercultural education for indigenous children in Peru; and international tax reform in multilateral spaces such as the OECD.
Sergio began his career as programme coordinator for drug policy and researcher on other topics at Dejusticia, a think-do thank in Colombia. As a member of the Research Consortium on Drugs and the Law (CEDD), a network of researchers from nine countries, he made important contributions to the understanding of how drug laws have been used to criminalise marginalised populations that bear the brunt of unjust and ineffective drug policies.
He played a catalytic role in the creation and functioning of a working group in the Americas that sought to reduce the number of women put behind bars for minor drug offences across the continent. He co-authored influential publications highlighting the human rights impacts of drug policies on human rights, including a chapter in the LSE report After the Drug Wars, endorsed by six Nobel prizewinners, and pioneering guides to policy reform in Colombia and in Latin America as a whole. In Colombia, Sergio worked as a consultant on decent work and historical memory on the armed conflict and served as policy advisor in the Colombian Congress.
As an activist, Sergio participated in building a coalition of human rights and fiscal justice organisations aimed at boosting collective counter-power to advance fiscal justice in Latin America. This coalition triggered the publication of the Principles for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy, a tool intended to shift the technocratic narrative around tax, debt and budgetary policies in the region, towards one centred on socio-economic justice. More recently, Sergio has conducted research on climate justice issues, including the conflicting narratives on the Green New Deal and other imagined visions of sustainability transitions, as well as on South-South cooperation in international climate negotiations.
Sergio holds a MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics and a MA in Law from the National University of Colombia.
When joining collective fights, I have had to deal with the multiple forces and arguments that seek to justify inequalities. We need to challenge them with a combination of interdisciplinary knowledge and collective counterpower. It is by connecting specific debates with the consequences they have for the rights of communities on the ground, and the struggles they are carrying out, that meaningful change can happen.Sergio Chaparro Hernandez