RadhikaCoomaraswamy Former Under Secretary General of the United NationsSri Lanka

Radhika Coomaraswamy received her BA from Yale University, her J.D. from Columbia University and her LLM from Harvard University. In Sri Lanka, she was Director of International Centre for Ethnic Studies from 1982 to 2005 and the Chairperson of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission from 2003 to 2006. Recently, from 2015-2018, she was a member of the Constitutional Council. Internationally, Radhika Coomaraswamy served as UN Under Secretary General and as Special Representative of the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict from 2006 until her retirement in 2012 and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women from 1994-2003 In 2014, the UN Secretary General asked Radhika Coomaraswamy to lead the Global Study to review the fifteen year implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. In 2017 she was appointed to the UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar and also appointed as a member of The Secretary General’s Board of Advisors on Mediation. In 2015 Foreign Policy magazine listed her as one of the top 100 Global thinkers. In 2020 She was appointed to The Commission on International Experts on Ethiopia Radhika Coomaraswamy is on the global faculty of the New York University School of Law. She was privileged to be asked to deliver the Grotius Lecture of the American Association of International Law in 2013 and the Tanner Lecture of the University of Michigan in 2016 and the Eli Lauterpact lecture of the University of Cambridge in 2020. She will teach at Yale University, the Jackson School on International Affairs durin the autumn of 2025. She has also received numerous prizes, awards and honours both nationally and internationally including the international law award of the American Bar Association, the Bruno Kreisky award, the Leo Ettinger award, among others. She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, University of Essex, Amherst College, Leuven University and the City University of New York. In Sri Lanka she received the honorary title of Deshamanya in 2015.