Rita Segato

JUDGE

International Rights of Nature Tribunal

Rita Segato (Argentina) is an Argentine-Brazilian academic, who has been called “one of Latin America’s most celebrated feminist anthropologists” and “one of the most lucid feminist thinkers of this era”. Segato was born in Buenos Aires and educated at the Instituto Interamericano de Etnomusicología y Folklore de Caracas. She has an MA and a PhD in Anthropology (1984) from Queens University, Belfast. She teaches Anthropology at the University of Brasilia, where she holds the UNESCO Chair of Anthropology and Bioethics; since 2011 she has taught on the Postgraduate Programme of Bioethics and Human Rights.  She additionally carries out research on behalf of Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. One of her specialist areas is the study of gender violence. In 2016, along with Prudencio García Martínez, Segato was an expert witness in the Sepur Zarco case, in which senior officers at a military base in Guatemala were convicted of crimes against humanity as a result of the holding of fourteen women in sexual and domestic slavery. The defense tried to challenge the expertise of the witnesses, but their appeal was unsuccessful.