Francisco Rivera is a human rights attorney, law professor, and founding director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Santa Clara University in California. He specializes in the inter-American human rights system and was a senior staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States that is based in Costa Rica. He has been a consultant for a number of NGOs, as well as for the United Nations Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights.