Leoncio Severino Lara Sáenz: Former Ombuds for UNAM and Founder of REDDU

Leoncio Severino Lara Sáenz passed away at the age of 85 in late April 2025. Lara served as defensor universitario of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City from 2003 to 2011 and was the founder and Executive Secretary of the Mexican Network of University Ombuds Offices (REDDU). He was also Vice President of the Instituto Latinoamericano del Ombudsman. Lara was also remembered as an active participant in the European Network of University Ombuds' annual conferences starting in 2007. For his many years of advocacy benefitting university Ombuds, ENOHE bestowed a lifetime membership to Lara in March 2024.

ENOHE provided these additional details about Lara's career: 

Leoncio Lara received a Law Degree from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua in Mexico and later a Doctorate in Law from the University of Naples in Italy. He was a member of the National Bar Association of Mexico and a member of the Executive Council of the Mexican Centre of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. He also served as a researcher at the Institute of Legal Research and a former General Counsel of UNAM, founded the Interdisciplinary Group of Studies on Senescence, and taught methodology and technique of legal research at various Mexican and foreign universities. 

Through his contributions to topics related to ombuds work on both sides of the Atlantic, he supported ENOHE’s own further professional development with the rich experiences gained from his daily work. On the benefits of the existence of university ombuds offices, Leoncio once clearly stated: “The ombudsman’s office will act in good faith and with equity to preserve and enforce the legal order of and within the University, with the aim of eradicating unreasonableness, arbitrariness, injustice and abuse of authority. The Ombudsman’s Office has been established as a participatory and democratic mechanism.” 

Lara organised the Spain-Mexico Bilateral Meetings of 2007, 2008 and 2009 on the Globalisation of the Defence of University Rights and Defence of University Rights, and between 2005 and 2011 eight meetings of REDDU in Mexico held in: Mexico City, Guanajuato, Acapulco, Mérida, Toluca, and Puebla. He furthermore organised thematic meetings on the defence of university rights, as well as the Round Table on the Visual from Europe of the Defence of University and Human Rights held in 2010 in Vienna, Austria, in addition to rpeatedly being an invited speaker in various European cities. 

Lara was the promoter of the drafting and dissemination of the Declaration of Yucatán in 2008 in Mérida on the Right of Access of Persons with Disabilities; the Right to Security of Universities in the Declaration of Mexico City of 2011; and the Declaration of Xochimilco of 2012 on the need to establish university ombudspersons to protect and defend the application of human and university rights through civic practices and the deployment of mechanisms of good faith, mediation and conciliation. 

 In October 2012 in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico, Lara received a tribute from REDDU and the Defensoría de los Derechos Universitarios of UNAM, and was awarded a recognition “for his invaluable impulse in the creation of REDDU and his outstanding work of six years in the activities of the Executive Secretariat of the Network”. In 2023, during the ENOHE Prague Conference, he was awarded the status of an ENOHE honorary member. 

National and international ombuds colleagues who had the pleasure of meeting and knowing him personally will miss him greatly. His writings will serve as guidelines for future ombuds generations both in the Americas and in Europe. 

Related posts: ENOHE-ACCUO 2010 Conference Embraces Diversity of Ombuds Practice in Higher Education; IOA and Eaton Corp to Host Ombuds Conference in Puerto Rico; University Ombudsmen Network in Mexico Signs León Declaration; ENOHE Awards Honorary Memberships to Longtime Advocates.