Sebastián Albuja has over a decade of experience working on human rights and humanitarian issues in the Americas, Africa, and Europe as an attorney, an academic, and an NGO leader. He currently works as the Deputy Director of the Africa Division with the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) in Washington, DC. Prior to joining ABA ROLI, Sebastián served for three years as Head of the Africa and Americas Department at the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, based in Geneva; for four years as Regional Analyst for the Americas with the same organization; for two years as Lecturer at Northeastern University in Boston; and for a year as Associate Attorney with one of Ecuador’s preeminent law firms, Quevedo & Ponce. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute (Washington, DC); a Research Assistant to Professor James Cavallaro at Harvard Law School; and a Research Fellow with Global Rights in Burundi.

Sebastián has contributed chapters to four academic books and has published articles in Forced Migration Review, the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, Foreign Affairs Latin America, Tobacco Control, and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction’s Global Assessment Report. Additionally, he has written and overseen dozens of non-academic reports dealing with internal displacement. His current research interests focus on the intersection between the rule of law and human mobility, including migration and forced migration.

He holds a Ph.D in Law and Public Policy (Northeastern University, U.S), where he was a Fulbright Scholar; a JD (Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador); and a BA (Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador), as well as the Executive Program for Non-Profit Leaders Certificate (Stanford Graduate School of Business, U.S). He is originally from Ecuador, and is fluent in Spanish, English, and French.