Armando Armas was born in 1981 in Caracas, Venezuela. He is a lawyer and public policy expert elected in 2015 as a Member of the Venezuelan parliament and now lives in exile due to political persecution by the Maduro regime.
Armas graduated from law school at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas-Venezuela (2004) and completed a master’s degree in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2007) with the dissertation “Democratic deficit in Venezuela: from the Pact of Punto Fijo to the Chavista Re-evolution”. He also holds a Master degree in International Development and Policy at the University of Chicago (2021).
In 2010 Armando Armas was the first Venezuelan to be a Draper-Hills Fellow (Now Fisher Family Fellowship) at Stanford University’s Center For Democracy, Development and The Rule Of Law. Armas is also a European University Institute’s Policy Leader Fellow (2022) where he worked on the political representation of diasporas. His main interests are Democratic Innovation, Foreign Policy and National Security and International Development.
In 2017 he was brutally attacked by the “collectivos” when they stormed the National Assembly. After the fraudolent elections of 2020 in Venezuela he has been campaigning aborad focussing on advocacy and information activities in Europe in order to raise awareness about the situation in Venezuela. Armas is a fervent Atlanticist who deeply believes that today the cleavage is no longer right-left, but democracy-dictatorship both nationally and internationally. Most recently he became part of the founding group of the World Liberty Congress, an organization gathering human rights activist in open societies to advocate for freedom, dignity and democracy.