Carolina Barrero
President and Executive Director, Citizens and Freedom
Carolina Barrero is a Cuban human rights defender, political leader, and a prominent international voice advocating for democratic transition in Cuba. A key figure in the San Isidro Movement and the 27N protests, she was indicted on multiple political charges by Cuban State Security that resulted in prolonged house arrest and repeated arbitrary detentions before being forced into exile in 2022 under direct threat from the regime.
She is President and Executive Director of Ciudadanía y Libertad, whose legal and policy reports on Cuba's architecture of repression are engaged in European Parliament and United Nations proceedings. Holder of the 2024 Sakharov Fellowship of the European Parliament and a Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, she is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Miami.
Her 2025 report on the mass state-facilitated recruitment of Cuban nationals into Russia's war against Ukraine, published with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, has reshaped the international debate on Cuba's role as a strategic partner of Russian aggression.