Ms Sonia Picado is Chair of the Board of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. She is a former member of the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica from San José and former President of the National Liberation Party. In 1999, she led the International Commission of Inquiry on East Timor to study human rights abuses there.

She was the Costa Rican Ambassador to the United States from 1994 to 1998 and the Executive Director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights from 1984 to 1994. During 1988 to 1994, she was Judge and Vice-Chair of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Ms. Picado was the first woman elected in Latin America as the Dean of a Law School (the University of Costa Rica) in 1980. She has taught at Salzburg, Austria, the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, the University of Dayton (Ohio, US), the World University Service in Austria, and Columbia University, among others.