CEJIL is a non-governmental, non-profit organization with consultative status before the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations (UN) and observer status before the African Commission of Human Rights.

The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) is a non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1991 by a group of prominent human rights defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean. CEJIL's principle objective is to achieve the full implementation of international human rights norms in the member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) through the use of the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights and other international protection mechanisms. CEJIL’s mandate is fulfilled through work in three program areas: the Legal Defense Program, the Training and Dissemination Program, and the Campaign to Strengthen the Inter-American System.

A central component of our work is the defense of human rights before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ("the Commission") and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ("the Court”). CEJIL is the first organization to offer an integrated program of defense, free legal consulting, education and oversight of the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights. Our docket, consisting of more than 200 hundred cases, is the largest and most diverse in the hemisphere. In addition, we are acting as representatives of the victims and as legal advisers to the Commission, in practically all the cases pending before the Court. CEJIL selects representative cases that exemplify a systemic pattern of abuse and whose resolution could impact the implementation of international human rights norms be it through its effect on the areas of law, domestic practices, individuals cases or state policies.

Since its first years, CEJIL has stood out for taking on important and illustrative cases of human rights abuses, as well as for the legal advice it provides to the NGO's in the region. Because the majority of activity related to the Inter-American System is centered around the OAS headquarters and the Inter-American Commission in Washington, DC, which is also the location of CEJIL’s lead office. CEJIL also operates an office in San José, Costa Rica, the site of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as a third office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In addition to these offices, CEJIL retains representatives in Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Asunción, Paraguay. In this way, CEJIL covers the entire hemisphere, handling cases and giving workshops in nearly every country each year.