Renata Ávila Pinto (born 1 January 1981) is a Guatemalan attorney and activist specializing in technology and intellectual property. She is a spokesperson and part of the team that defends

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of News leak, leaks from Chels ...

and

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

, under the direction of

Baltasar Garzón Baltasar Garzón Real (; born 26 October 1955) is a Spanish former judge in Spain's central criminal court, the '' Audiencia Nacional'' responsible for investigation the most serious criminal cases, including terrorism, organised crime, crimes ...

. Since October 2021 she has been the CEO of the UK-based

Open Knowledge Foundation Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge, England. It is incorporated in Engla ...

. She was a defender of survivors of genocide and other human rights abuses in Guatemala, and was part of the legal team led by the Spanish lawyer Almudena Bernabeu in the case of

Rigoberta Menchú Rigoberta Menchú Tum (; born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and afte ...

against

Efraín Ríos Montt José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the blo ...

. She is a member of the board of directors of

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

, an international organization that advocates for

open knowledge Open knowledge (or free knowledge) is knowledge that is free to use, reuse, and redistribute without legal, social, or technological restriction. Open knowledge organizations and activists have proposed principles and methodologies related to the ...

and

libre culture The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content, otherwise known as open content. They encourage creators to create such content by using p ...

. She is also a board member of

Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, is a left-wing European political alliance founded in 2016. It operates as a pan-European umbrella for subsidiary parties sharing the same name and branding (e.g. MeRA25, MERA25), and runs el ...

(DiEM25), a pan-European initiative launched by former Greek finance minister and economist

Yanis Varoufakis Ioannis Georgiou "Yanis" Varoufakis (; born 24 March 1961) is a Greek economist and politician. Since 2018, he has been Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founde ...

, which seeks to democratize the European Union.

Career

Latin America Internet Freedoms Panel 08

Renata Ávila Pinto holds a licentiate in law from the

Universidad Francisco Marroquín Francisco Marroquín University ( Spanish: ''Universidad Francisco Marroquín''), also known by the abbreviation UFM, is a private, secular university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. It describes its mission as "to teach and disseminate the ethical, ...

in Guatemala and has a master's degree in law from the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

, as well as studies in international law in

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

. She was part of the international legal team that represented the victims of genocide and other crimes against humanity in their extradition case before the

National Court of Spain The Audiencia Nacional (; ) is a high court in Spain with jurisdiction over all of the Spanish territory. It is specialised in certain kinds of crime, having original jurisdiction over major crimes such as those committed against the Crown and i ...

, including the prominent indigenous leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner

. She has also been a legal advisor to various whistleblowers and journalists, alongside the lawyer

. After it was reported that

Daniel Domscheit-Berg Daniel Domscheit-Berg (; ; born 1978), previously known under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, is a German technology activist. He is best known as the former spokesperson for WikiLeaks and the author of ''Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assa ...

deleted WikiLeaks submissions, she wrote an open letter in 2011 asking what happened to documents she gave to

allegedly "detailing proof of

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...

and government abuse of a Latin America country". As a

digital rights Digital rights are those human rights and Natural and legal rights, legal rights that allow individuals to access, use, create, and publish digital media or to access and use computers, other Consumer electronics, electronic devices, and teleco ...

activist, she has denounced the deterioration of

net neutrality Net neutrality, sometimes referred to as network neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering User (computing), users and online content providers consistent tra ...

, mass surveillance, and attacks on freedom of expression on the Internet. For five years she was chief digital rights advisor at the

World Wide Web Foundation The World Wide Web Foundation, also known as the Web Foundation, was a US-based international nonprofit organization advocating for a free and open web for everyone. It was cofounded by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and ...

. Along with founder

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...

, she led the Web We Want campaign, promoting respect for human rights in the digital era in more than 75 countries. In 2018 she was appointed Executive Director of the , an organization that promotes the openness of data and its use in favor of society in Latin America, based in Chile and Brazil. Ávila is a member of the

board and was a trustee of the

Courage Foundation The Courage Foundation is an international organisation based in Germany, the UK and the US that supports whistleblowers and journalists by fundraising for their legal defence. Founded on August 9, 2013, as the Journalistic Source Protection Def ...

. She also serves as a member of the advisory board and the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

's Data Activism project. She is part of the coordinating collective of

DiEM25 The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, is a left-wing European political alliance founded in 2016. It operates as a pan-European umbrella for subsidiary parties sharing the same name and branding (e.g. MeRA25, MERA25), and runs elect ...

, which explores the potential of decentralized technologies in Europe. She has written for media outlets such as eldiario.es,

Global Voices Global Voices is an international community of writers, bloggers and digital activists that aim to translate and report on what is being said in citizen media worldwide. It is a non-profit project started at the Berkman Center for Internet and ...

, and

openDemocracy openDemocracy is an independent media platform and news website based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2001, openDemocracy states that through reporting and analysis of social and political issues, they seek to "challenge power and encourage d ...

, as well as for various academic publications and international periodicals. She appeared in the documentaries ''ForEveryone.Net'' (2015), ''

Risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environ ...

'' (2016), and ''Hacking Justice'' (2017). The book ''Women, Whistleblowing, Wikileaks: A Conversation'', which she co-wrote with Sarah Harrison and Angela Richter, covers women who have played an active role in

, but who have not had proportionate media coverage. In 2014, she was one of the participants in the creation of the

Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (in Portuguese: Marco Civil da Internet, officially (Federal) Law No 12.965/2014) is the law that governs the use of the Internet in Brazil and sets out guidelines for state action and rights and d ...

in order to implement legislation to protect net neutrality. In 2020, she cofounded the Geneva-based Polylateral Association and currently serves as its president.

Publications

"Mapping Digital Media: Guatemala"
(January 2014),

Open Society Foundations Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is an American grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the s ...

, with Alejandra Gutiérrez Valdizán * ''Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks: A Conversation'' (2017),

OR Books OR Books is a New York City-based independent publishing house founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson in 2009. The company sells digital and Print on demand, print-on-demand books directly to the customer and focuses on creative promotion throug ...

, , with Sarah Harrison and Angela Richter

References

External links

Renata Ávila Pinto
at

PEN America PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922, and headquartered in New York City, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose goal is to raise awareness for the protection of free expression in the United States and worldwide th ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Avila Pinto, Renata 1981 births Guatemalan human rights activists Guatemalan women lawyers Living people Members of the Creative Commons board of directors Universidad Francisco Marroquín alumni University of Turin alumni Guatemalan women human rights activists 21st-century Guatemalan lawyers 21st-century women lawyers People associated with WikiLeaks