Daniel Cooper Bermúdez

 

Daniel Cooper Bermúdez, 28, a 2015 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, is a human rights defender from Maracaibo, Venezuela. With Venezuela’s authoritarian government having closed the nation’s democratic means of political participation, Cooper Bermudez works to support other civil society organizations and document human rights violations, bring attention to the nation’s humanitarian crisis and seek justice for victims. He is founder and director of Hearts on Venezuela, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to expand the reach of Venezuela’s civil society internationally by translating and distributing texts produced by other organizations seeking a peaceful and democratic resolution to the country’s political turmoil. Under continuous harassment by the government, Cooper Bermudez and his fellow Venezuelan human rights activists remain undaunted. “We strive to persevere in a context of violence,” he said. At Oxford, Cooper Bermúdez intends to build and strengthen networks of activists and policymakers from across the global South to tackle common issues ranging from human rights abuses to climate change to what he describes as “renovating democratic practices for the 21st century.”

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