Antonietta Ledezma is a Venezuelan human rights activist and the daughter of former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who was a political prisoner in Venezuela. Her father, an opposition leader in the country, was arbitrarily arrested in 2015 after he was accused of conspiring to overthrow Nicolas Maduro’s government. The arrest has been denounced by the international human rights community as a politically motivated effort to silence an opposition leader. Due to the lack of judicial independence in Venezuela, he was not offered a fair trial. The injustice of her father’s arrest has motivated Ledezma to campaign against the Venezuelan dictatorship and its attacks on human rights. Ledezma spoke at the 2016 Geneva Summit, where she accepted the Geneva Summit Courage Award on behalf of her father. In 2017, her father escaped and fled to exile in Spain, where he remains a strong advocate for the rebuilding of Venezuelan democracy.
