Rodolfo Stavenhagen


Rodolfo Stavenhagen was a German-born Mexican sociologist and anthropologist who specialized in the study of human rights and the political relations between indigenous peoples and states. He was a professor-researcher at El Colegio de México. In 2001 he was appointed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people through Resolution 2001/57. His mandate expired 30 April 2008. He was succeeded by Prof S. James Anaya of the University of Arizona.
He was born in 1932 in Frankfurt to a Jewish family, and because of Nazi persecution his family fled to Mexico in 1940. He studied at the University of Chicago and later at Mexico's Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, before receiving his PhD from the University of Paris.
He taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and Stanford and the UNAM. The International Institute of Social Studies awarded its Honorary Fellowship to Rodolfo Stavenhagen in 1982.

Selected publications in English