Dalia Fernanda Márquez Añez is a Venezuelan lawyer, human rights defender, environmentalist, feminist, and peacebuilder. With a Master’s degree in Human Rights and a specialization in Environmental Law, she has dedicated over 12 years to strengthening the capacities of youth, women, and vulnerable communities across Latin America and the Caribbean, promoting their active participation in decision-making spaces and processes of social transformation.
Read more about her story and be inspired.
Her inspiration arose from witnessing the deep social and environmental inequalities in her country, which motivated her to create platforms that amplify historically excluded voices. She founded Juventud Unida en Acción, an NGO accredited by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), through which she has led training programs, policy advocacy, and community mobilization efforts.
Dalia has developed initiatives that promote youth leadership, environmental diplomacy, mental health support for activists, peaceful conflict resolution, and environmental education through the Eco-Schools project. These programs have directly impacted vulnerable communities, including migrants, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and human rights and environmental defenders.
A cornerstone of her work has been the empowerment of young women, fostering their leadership in local, national, and international spaces. She has driven gender-focused training processes, creating tools for women to influence public policy, lead community projects, and participate in global environmental negotiations. Her intersectional approach has helped make visible the multiple forms of discrimination faced by women in vulnerable contexts and has promoted networks of support and collaboration among them.
She has served as a youth advisor to the TUNZA strategy, regional civil society facilitator for UNEP, and co-founder of networks such as LACEMOS and the Venezuelan chapter of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN). She has also coordinated national and regional consultations on Nature-Based Solutions (NbS), promoting meaningful youth participation in the global environmental agenda.
On Challenges she has faced.
Among the challenges she has faced are limited resources, institutional resistance to youth participation, and the need to create safe spaces for activists. Despite these obstacles, her achievements include building youth networks, influencing public policies with gender and youth perspectives, and opening channels of participation for youth-led organizations in the region.
Her work has been key to strengthening youth and women’s leadership, promoting environmental justice, and building bridges between communities, governments, and international organizations, always guided by a vision of peace, equity, and sustainability.
Connect to Diala here, Website
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