Statement from Dorchen Leidholdt, co-founder and Board Member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) on the passing of Teresa Ulloa Ziáurriz (31 December 1949 – 28 September 2025):

CATW is saddened to announce the passing of Teresa Ulloa Ziáurriz, CATW Board Member and the Director of CATW-Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC). She is survived by her daughter Graciella.

A brilliant and effective lawyer and extraordinarily dynamic longtime feminist abolitionist leader, Teresa’s contributions to the movement to end sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and the system of prostitution, are too numerous to be recounted. Teresa led CATW’s work in Latin America and the Caribbean for over two and a half decades. I first met her at the United Nations in the late 1990s and was immediately impressed with her deep understanding of the issues at hand and how the global political environment addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls. I was thrilled when she agreed to join CATW’s Board of Directors and subsequently, taking over the leadership of the CATW-LAC office after the death of its founder, Venezuelan economist Zoraida Rodriguez Ramirez.

On many occasions over two decades, I visited Teresa in Mexico to report on her work for funders. Together we traveled across Mexico, including to areas where organized criminal gangs and their government allies were active. Teresa received death threats regularly. Undeterred, she continued to develop effective strategies and organized successful meetings with many government officials at the highest level to bring victims and survivors of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation to the forefront. Her skills movement-building were formidable and the impactful trainings she conducted affected myriad stakeholders from educators in teachers’ unions to activists in allied movements in Mexico and the LAC region. These stakeholders showed great respect for Teresa’s history, expertise, and impeccable achievements and credentials. Teresa organized impactful press conferences and groundbreaking human rights conferences that women’s rights and the abolition of sex trafficking and prostitution.

Teresa spearheaded shadow reports during meetings of the CEDAW Committee and gave important input into CEDAW General Recommendations. She persuaded legislatures in Mexico to pass laws furthering the rights of victims of sexual violence and sex trafficking.  She partnered with survivors and grassroots leaders throughout Latin America. Teresa successfully organized many campaigns throughout the years to oppose the decriminalization of the sex trade in Mexico and stymied the proponents of legalized prostitution.

For several years, Teresa ran a shelter and provided holistic services to trafficking survivors in Mexico. Teresa had vast knowledge of the laws and legal systems in both Mexico and the U.S., as well as the LAC region, and of human right instruments and mechanisms that address these violations.  She served as an expert witness for domestic violence survivors in Hague Convention cases; represented trafficking survivors in criminal and civil proceedings in Mexico; and collaborated with lawyers at Sanctuary for Families in cases that resulted in the conviction of sex trafficking organizations. When a Colombian trafficking survivor’s twin daughters were abducted by her trafficker and disappeared, Teresa helped Sanctuary and federal officials locate the little girls in a brothel in Mexico City and reunite them with their bereft mother.

The abolitionist commitment and fervor we witness today in Mexico and the LAC region is a testament to Teresa’s legacy.

May she rest in Peace and Power.

Dorchen Leidholdt

Partial biography of Teresa Ulloa Ziáurriz and her outstanding accomplishments.

Early life and education

• Born in Mexico City on December 31, 1949, Teresa Ziáurriz pursued her education in law and pedagogy.
• While studying, she was already involved in activism, and at the age of 20, she was elected as a trade union’s Secretary General, a position she has said drew disappointment from her father.
• She later earned diplomas in gender, law, and human rights from institutions including the University of Paris-Sorbonne and New York University.

Career and activism

• Early legal career: Teresa began her legal work as a consultant for unions. An early case involving the rape of young girls profoundly affected her and led her to dedicate her life to advocating for women’s and girls’ rights within Mexico’s patriarchal legal system. She is recognized as one of Mexico’s first female lawyers to specialize in defending women’s and girls’ rights.
• Feminist legal battles and advances: Since joining the feminist movement, Teresa has represented hundreds of women in legal battles against abuse, helping to free women from jail and secure convictions for perpetrators. She was the first woman lawyer to defend women’s reproductive and sexual rights in Mexican courts. She advanced legal protections for women in Mexico in the late 1980s and early 1990s, securing the passage of laws that increased punishment for rape and closed loopholes for rapists. She founded an interdisciplinary organization called Popular Women Defenders. Working with a cadre of porfessionals including lawyers, psychologists, social workers, and doctors, Teresa developed a training program for the organization to use on gender-based violence.
• Work against human trafficking: She expanded her advocacy to focus on combating human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, which she views as forms of violence against women.
• CATW–LAC: In 2003 Teresa assumed leadership of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC). The regional branch of the international CATW, CATW-LAC, is headquartered in Mexico City and works with a network of 26 NGOs in 25 Latin American countries. She developed prevention programs that educated boys and young men about the harms of trafficking and prostitution to women and girls. She campaigned during the World Cup to spread awareness about sex trafficking of women during the sporting event. The campaign was featured in the media, including Argentina’s International Network of Journalists with Gender Perspectives. Teresa was active within the United Nations system for decades, including her regular participation at the annual Commission Status of Women, and worked to educate diplomats and NGO leaders about the centrality of the abolition of prostitution to women’s human rights and equality.
• Legislative and policy work: Teresa was a consultant on dozens of federal and state laws in Mexico and other countries. She also designed anti-trafficking state policies and national plans.
• Preventing the demand for prostitution: Teresa directed CATW-LAC’s campaigns to address the demand side for prostitution, the driving impetus for sex trafficking. In Mexico, CATW-LAC ran a project aimed at educating young men, taxi drivers, and police about the harms sex buyers inflict on the women they purchase and of prostitution, generally.
• Advocacy on the international stage: Teresa has represented victims in United States Immigration Tribunal cases and at the United Nations, advocating for victims of gender-based violence.

Honors and recognition

• In 2011, Teresa received the Gleitsman International Activist Award for her 40 years of outstanding contributions to preventing and combating human trafficking and gender-based violence.
• In 2025, she was honored by the publication feminismo inc. as an “unflagging force” and an inspiration in the feminist and human rights struggle