Sofía Cánovas Pereda is an international lawyer and senior humanitarian leader with more than fifteen years of experience across all continents, at the intersection of human rights, public health, and safeguarding.

Until recently she has served as Senior Advisor to the United Nations’ Assistant Secretary-General, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator of the United Nations in Ukraine, where she has provided strategic counsel at the highest level of the U.N. system in one of the world’s most complex and high-stakes humanitarian and political environments.

In her Kyiv-based role, Ms. Cánovas Pereda also acted as Senior Inter-Agency Coordinator for the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) and as the Country Victims’ Rights Focal Point under the Office of the Victims’ Rights Advocate at U.N. Headquarters. Appointed by the U.N. Country Team as the country’s lead advocate on victims’ rights, she coordinates more than 200 entities across the U.N. system, international and national NGOs, civil society organizations, and government counterparts. Her work focuses on strengthening accountability, embedding survivor-centered approaches, and ensuring system-wide compliance with victims’ rights standards across humanitarian, development, and recovery operations in Ukraine.

She was previously deployed as Inter-Agency PSEA Coordinator in Mali, where she supported the Resident Coordinator’s Office in negotiating, operationalizing, and managing inter-agency PSEA frameworks in a highly fragile context.

Prior to her current assignment, Ms. Cánovas Pereda held senior roles with UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO, OHCHR, UNDP, and UN peace operations across Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe. She served as Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR) Inter-Agency Coordinator and UNFPA Sub-Office Team Lead in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, overseeing GBV prevention and response in one of the world’s largest refugee operations. Earlier, she worked as Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF in New York, focusing on discriminatory social and gender norms, harmful practices, and policy development, including contributions to flagship UNFPA-UNICEF initiatives on female genital mutilation. In Geneva, she served as Legal and Governance Officer and Human Rights and Gender Advisor to the Executive Office of Unitaid, where she drafted Executive Board resolutions, negotiated grant agreements, and designed a gender-transformative institutional strategy that significantly improved Unitaid’s global gender ranking.

Her earlier career includes service as Human Rights Officer and Program Manager with the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), expert roles with the UN Human Rights Council on violence against women, child marriage, and the digital divide, and advisory work with the World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She began her professional life as an intellectual property and ICT lawyer in private practice and multinational corporations, including Bacardi, DuPont, PwC, and leading international law firms, before transitioning fully into international public service.

Ms. Cánovas Pereda is also engaged in academia and capacity-building. She is a Guest Lecturer at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the Master’s program on Gender, Migration, and Human Rights, contributing to the training of future practitioners and policymakers in international law and humanitarian ethics.

Her publications include policy briefs, technical notes, and legal analyses produced under U.N. auspices on gender equality, harmful practices, child protection, public health, and PSEA, including contributions to inter-agency guidance and Human Rights Council–mandated workstreams. Her professional recognition includes senior appointments as Inter-Agency PSEA Coordinator and Country Victims’ Rights Focal Point in multiple U.N. duty stations, reflecting sustained trust at the highest institutional levels.

Ms. Cánovas Pereda holds an Advanced Law Degree from the Universitat de Girona, with a focus on human rights, international organizations, and criminal law, and a Master’s degree in Intellectual Property and ICT Law from ESADE. She has completed advanced studies in Gender and Development at the Geneva Graduate Institute and specialized training in humanitarian crises, global health diplomacy, and adolescent health through the University of London, the University of Melbourne, and U.N.-affiliated institutions. She is admitted to the Barcelona Bar Association.

She is fluent in Spanish, French, English, and Catalan, with working knowledge of Italian.