Module 9 Session 5 Materials
Ms. Adriana Quinones,
Head of Human Rights and Development, Deputy Director of the UN Women Office at the United Nations in Geneva
Ms. Adriana Quiñones is the Chief of the Human Rights and Non-discrimination section at UN Women and the Deputy Head of UN Women Geneva Office.
Based in Geneva, she leads UN Women´s work to support Member States on rights-based approaches to gender equality — from leveraging international human rights mechanisms to advancing access to justice and combating discrimination against specific groups of women and girls.
For the last 18 years, she worked at UN Women in a variety of positions, including Manager of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls, where she supervised a portfolio of over USD 60 million, developed a harmonized monitoring and evaluation strategy, and thematic learning windows. As regional advisor for Ending violence against women in the Latin American Regional Office, she developed UN Women’s Theory of Change to address femicide, later funded by the Spotlight initiative. This work took her to Guatemala, where, as country representative, she led the creation of an Indigenous women's political platform, an action coalition on women’s economic empowerment, and the implementation of reparations for the landmark Sepur Zarco case related to sexual violence in conflict.
Before joining UN Women, Adriana led the Inter-American Development Bank’s first Gender Mainstreaming Trust Fund and advised the High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia in its efforts to apply international humanitarian law to protect victims of the internal armed conflict. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Adriana has a master's degree from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a second master’s degree in economics and international Development from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
