Ms. Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and as Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 2006 to 2012. In this capacity, she led global efforts to protect children affected by armed conflict and engaged with governments and armed groups to end grave violations against children. In 1994, she was appointed the United Nations’ first Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, where she played a pioneering role in framing violence against women as an international human rights and political issue. She later served on the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar and the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia. She was also the lead author of the Global Study, the fifteen-year review of Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

At the regional level, Ms. Coomaraswamy was a founding member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development and is Chairperson of South Asians for Human Rights. In Sri Lanka, she has served as a member of the Constitutional Council and as Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission. She also co-founded the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in 1982 and later served as its Executive Director, contributing to research and policy work on ethnic relations, governance and human rights.

Ms. Coomaraswamy has combined her policy work with an academic career. She has been a Global Professor at New York University School of Law and has taught international human rights law at New College, Oxford. She has published extensively on constitutional law, ethnic conflict and women’s rights, and has delivered major international lectures, including the Grotius Lecture of the American Society of International Law in 2013 and the Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the University of Michigan in 2016.

Ms. Coomaraswamy has received numerous international awards and distinctions for her contribution to human rights, including the title of Deshamanya, one of Sri Lanka’s highest national honours.