The Center for International Human Rights (CIHR) at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law has awarded their 11th Global Jurist of the Year Award to Magistrate Judge Fernando Cruz Castro of Costa Rica for his judicial leadership centering the dignity and fundamental rights of migrants.
Castro is the former president of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica and currently serves as a justice in the Constitutional Chamber. During his more than 20 years of service in the Constitutional Chamber, he has promoted the use of international human rights law and defended its fundamental principles through his work.
The award will recognize his recent work and contribution to a resolution of the Constitutional Chamber regarding migrants transferred to Costa Rica from the U.S. and held at the Temporary Migrant Care Center (CATEM) detention center. These migrants originally came from countries including Afghanistan, Russia, Armenia, Iran and China, and had no personal ties to Costa Rica.
"Judge Fernando Cruz Castro's recent recognition of the rights of migrants involuntarily transferred to Costa Rica from the United States shows his exemplary commitment to the principle that every human being has fundamental rights and dignity," said Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Center for International Human Rights. "His career and jurisprudence, including his decisions in the face of considerable adversity, represent the principled approach towards human rights we seek to recognize through the Global Jurist Award."
When responding to the facts of the CATEM case, Castro wrote, "In this case, migrants were treated as objects, subjected to a process of humiliation that I cannot ignore. I refuse to look the other way."
He continued: "There's a tendency to think that [migrants'] undocumented status renders them invisible, silenced by inhumanity. Migrants do not lose their inherent dignity simply because they lack documents… They remain dignified people, even without 'papers.'"
Castro will receive the honor during a ceremony at Northwestern Pritzker Law on Wednesday, March 18.
Each year, the Center for International Human Rights presents the Global Jurist Award to a sitting judge whose judicial work and career promotes or defends the principles of international human rights law, at times in the face of adversity or threat.
Past recipients of the CIHR's Global Jurist Award include Judge Belkis Florentina Izquierdo Torres - Aty Seikuinduwa from Colombia; Judge Igor Tuleya of Poland; Hon. Miguel Angel Galvez of Guatemala; Judge Anisa Rasooli on behalf of all women judges in Afghanistan; Justice Dikgang Moseneke of the South African Constitutional Court; and Justice Shireen Avis Fisher of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
