Luis Ernesto Pedernera Reyna was a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, with a mandate for the period 2017/2021. He was Chairman of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, elected by acclamation and becoming the first Latin American and Spanish-speaking person to chair this body. He was Vice-President of the UN Meeting of Chairpersons of Treaty Bodies. He was the coordinator of the General Debate Day “Strengthening Children as Human Rights Defenders” held in 2018.

He is a member of the working group on individual petitions of the Third Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He has visited countries in different regions of the world at the invitation of States, national human rights institutions, children’s ombudsmen, United Nations agencies and civil society organizations to help disseminate and implement the conclusions and recommendations.

Member of the Academic Committee of the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Juvenile Justice of the University of Geneva and the Institut de droit de l’Enfant. He is a guest lecturer in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Uruguay and abroad and the author of numerous articles on children’s rights in specialized and academic publications.

President of the Scientific Committee of the World Congress on Juvenile Criminal Justice to be held in Mexico in 2021. She is a member of the Governing Board of the African Child Policy Forum. He was executive secretary of the Uruguayan Coalition for the Follow-up of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He was a member of the National Honorary and Consultative Council for Children and Adolescents, a coordinating body created by the Code for Children and Adolescents in Uruguay. He was a member of the Board of Directors of IELSUR (Instituto de Estudios legales y Sociales del Uruguay). He was a member of the Coordinating Council of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (REDLAMYC), where he represented the Southern Sub-Region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay).

He has a vast experience in monitoring the adolescent criminal justice systems, has visited and coordinated work teams for the inspection of children’s detention centers, in Uruguay and other countries, working specifically in the fight against torture.

In 2011, he founded the National Commission against the Lowering of the Age of Imputability, which worked to stop the constitutional reform that in 2014 attempted to judge adolescents by the adult criminal justice system.