Roxanna Carrillo


Roxanna Carrillo is a Peruvian activist and feminist. Carrillo has worked for the United Nations for around twenty years. She was involved in the United Nations Development Fund for Women where she studied gender based violence and its affect on women around the world.

Biography

Carrillo studied literature and linguistics at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Carrillo earned her masters degree in political science from Rutgers University. Carrillo began a relationship with Charlotte Bunch that was both professional and personal in 1983. The two worked on feminist projects in Latin America and have been together for more than thirty years.

Work

Carrillo is one of the founders of the feminist organization, Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán. The Centro is one of the first non-governmental organizations for women created in Peru.
Carrillo was responsible for bringing the issue of violence against women to international prominence at the United Nations in the early 1990s. In 1991, she wrote a research paper for the Human Rights Commission on this topic and how violence affected women's lives. Later, Carrillo was hired by the United Nations Development Fund for Women as a consultant on violence against women. Carrillo's research at UNIFEM found that worldwide, a lack of economic opportunity was at the root of many different forms of violence against women. This research, in addition to work done by Charlotte Bunch, was the basis of "mandating a broader focus for UNIFEM in the early 1990s." In 1993, she was part of the group that put "women's rights as human rights" on the agenda for the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. Carrillo worked for the United Nations for around twenty years.