GC REAIM Commissioner
Jimena Sofía Viveros Álvarez is a distinguished international lawyer, who serves as Chief of Staff and Head Legal Advisor to Justice Dr. Loretta Ortiz Ahlf at the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice, and previously held the same position at the Federal Judicial Council.
At present, she also serves in her personal capacity as a Member of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence which is tasked with advancing recommendations for global governance of AI.
Her ample international experience includes various roles at the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia for the disarmament of the FARC. She has also done work for the Lebanese Supreme Court, in addition to NGOs in Kenya, Cambodia and Palestine. In Mexico, she has held senior national leadership positions at the Ministry of Security and Civilian Protection, and at the Federal Tax and Finance Prosecutor’s Office, serving at the level of Director General.
Ms. Viveros’s expertise in international public, humanitarian, criminal and human rights law currently focuses on autonomous weapons systems (AWS), AI in the military and law enforcement, international cooperation mechanisms and global AI governance strategies relating to their impact on international peace and security law and policy frameworks. She is the Co-founder and Vice-President of the International Law Commission of Mexico, as well as an active member of several national and international academic associations, such as the Specialized Research Group on Artificial Intelligence and Law, the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Criminal Court’s Case Matrix Legal Tools Project. Moreover, she has taught the course on International Criminal Law and Modes of Liability at the LL.M. Master of Laws Programme in International Crime and Justice at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and John F. Kennedy University in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Ms. Viveros is internationally recognized as a widely published author on AI and AWS, highlighting the following books and publications: Autonomous Weapons Systems: The Accountability Conundrum, published in 2021 by the Legal Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico separately in English and Spanish; The Ultimate and Perhaps the Last Paradigm Shift – Artificial Intelligence, published in 2021 by Wolters Kluwer separately in English and Spanish; AI and the International Responsibility of States, published in 2022 by the Legal Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Spanish; Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Use of Force, published in 2023 by Ethics Press in English; Drone Swarms as Weapons of Mass Destruction, forthcoming in April 2024, published by Opinio Juris in English.
Furthermore, she is also a prominent author in other various fields of law, such as: The access to justice in criminal tax law: the Mexican State’s experience, published in 2023 by the University for Peace in Spanish, The Balance Between Immunity and Impunity in the Prosecution of International Crimes, published in 2016 by the Baltasar Garzón International Foundation Publications in English; and, with Justice Dr. Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, she has co-authored The Electric Industry in Mexico and the Access to Electric Energy as a Human Right, published in 2022 by Porrúa in Spanish, The Judicial Protection of Social Rights, published in 2023 by Tirant Lo Blanch in Spanish; and co-edited also with Justice Dr. Loretta Ortiz Ahlf the Commentaries on the American Convention on Human Rights, forthcoming in 2024, published by Tirant Lo Blanch.
Ms. Viveros earned her Law Degree at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City in a combined International Programme with the University of Salamanca in Spain and obtained her LL.M. in Public International Law from Leiden University, specializing in International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law. Currently, she is finalizing her Doctoral thesis at Cologne University, supervised by Dr. Claus Kreß, on the impact of AI and autonomous weapons systems on the international peace and security law and policy framework with concrete propositions to achieve global governance from different legal perspectives.
