Joseph Berra is the Director of the Human Rights in the Americas Project and the Human Rights in Action Clinic with the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law. His teaching and research interests include international human rights, the rights of Indigenous and Afrodescendent peoples under international law, and the Inter-American system for human rights. Berra coordinates projects with organizational partners in the U.S. and Latin America to engage students in human rights advocacy and the Inter-American system for human rights. The Human Rights in Action Clinic includes an international field experience in Honduras. Current projects include collaboration with Indigenous organizations in defense of their territorial rights and resistance to extractivist industries, litigation in the Inter-American System for Human Rights, and supporting local tribes and Indigenous migrants in Los Angeles.  

Before coming to UCLA, Berra was a successful civil and human rights litigator with both the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Texas Civil Rights Project.  He is the past Executive Director of the Caribbean Central American Research Council, an inter-disciplinary activist research organization, and currently serves on the CCARC Board.  He co-authored two studies with CCARC in 2002 and 2007 to support the territorial claims of Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities in Honduras. A former Jesuit, Berra spent many years living and working in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America before earning his law degree.  

Berra holds a J.D. from St. Mary’s University School of Law; an M.A. in Social Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin; an M.Div. from the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador, El Salvador; and a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Louis University.

Read “Garífuna Territorial Reparation: A report from the field” by Joseph Berra and Mollie Cueva-Dabkoski of the Human Rights in Action Clinic.