Imagining Resistance: Speaker Event with Adriana Roman

Adriana Castaño Roman was born in 1977 in the city of Medellín, Colombia. Since graduating as a lawyer from the Law and Political Science department at the University of Antioquia, she has worked as a human rights defender with an integrated vision of the rights of young people, social, economic and cultural rights and the right to dignified housing for communities and displaced people. Adriana has been an activist with the Medellín Youth Network since 1996, when she first joined as a participant and coordinator of a youth group in one of Medellín’s neighborhoods. Since 1998, she has had many different roles in the organization: she coordinated a program focused on human rights, conscientious objection and active nonviolence, and has worked to accompany young conscientious objectors both legally and politically. Currently she gives legal advice to conscientious objectors, as well as denounces forced recruitment and participates in a new strategy of the Medellín Youth Network which works to expose the concentration of wealth in the hands of so few, and organizes political and legal action to enforce people’s rights to water, public services and housing. Adriana has also been a spokesperson in national and international events on peace and human rights and after her visit to the US in February, will be on her way to India, where she will represent the Medellín Youth Network at the War Resister’s League international conference.