Lydia Cacho

(Mexico City, 1963) She is a journalist, writer and well-known activist in defence of human rights. She has investigated and denounced human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women, boys and girls, both in Mexico and beyond its borders. Since her exposés have implicated members of the Mexican political class, she has been imprisoned and tortured as well as receiving death threats. She has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Olof Palme Prize 2011, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, the Human Rights Watch Award, the House of America of Catalonia Award for Freedom of Expression, and the Journalists’ Union of Valencia Prize. In 2000, she and several other people founded the Comprehensive Care Centre for Women (CIAM) in Cancun, which attends to women and children who are victims of domestic and sexual violence. She writes as a political journalist for La voz del Caribe, is editorial director of the review and television programme “Esta boca es mía. Apuntes de equidad y género” and a specialist in issues of gender and violence for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She has written several books, including Esclavas del poder: un viaje al corazón de la trata sexual de mujeres y niñas en el mundo (Debate, 2011 – published in English as Slavery Inc.: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking); Los demonios del Edén. El poder que protege la pornografía infantil (The Devils of Eden: The Power That Protects Child Pornography, Debolsillo, 2010);and Memorias de una infamia (Memoirs of an Infamy, Debate, 2008).