Mayda

Venezuela, Autumn 2025

Mayda Hocevar González is a Venezuelan lawyer, university professor, and human rights defender. She is the founder and director of the Human Rights Observatory of the University of Los Andes (ODH-ULA), an institution established in the context of the 2014 national protests to document and denounce human rights violations, with a particular focus on academic freedom and civic space.

Under her leadership, the ODH-ULA has carried out national and international advocacy to raise awareness about the decline of democracy and the persecution of students, academics, and university authorities in Venezuela. She has promoted the consolidation of a team of lawyers providing legal assistance and accompaniment to victims, and, as a university-based initiative, has fostered education and training programmes on human rights and gender equality for students, public officials, and community leaders in the rural Andes region of Venezuela.

Mayda has been an invited speaker at national and international conferences and has published academic articles in various international journals.

During her participation in the Protective Fellowship Scheme for Human Rights Defenders at the Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York, she is developing a project on the memory of university repression in Venezuela (2014–2024) and the role of universities as spaces of resistance and human rights defense.