Radhika Coomaraswamy | |
---|---|
United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict | |
In office April 2006 –13 July 2012 | |
Constitutional Council (Sri Lanka) as a civil representative | |
In office 10 September 2015 –10 September 2018 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Colombo,Ceylon | 17 September 1953
Nationality | Sri Lankan |
Parent(s) | Rajendra Coomaraswamy (father) Wijeyamani (mother) |
Relatives | Indrajit Coomaraswamy (brother) |
Alma mater | Yale University Harvard University Columbia University Amherst College University of Edinburgh University of Essex CUNY School of Law United Nations International School |
Awards | Deshamanya |
Deshamanya Radhika Coomaraswamy (born 17 September 1953) [1] is a Sri Lankan lawyer,diplomat and human rights advocate who served as an Under-Secretary General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 2006 to 2012. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. [2] In 1994,she was appointed the United Nations’Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women —the first under this mandate. Her appointment marked the first time that violence against women was conceptualized as a political issue internationally.
She co-founded the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) in 1982. She was nominated to the Constitutional Council (Sri Lanka) as a civil representative on 10 September 2015. [3] In 2017,after atrocities against the Rohingya people,she was appointed a Member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar.
Coomaraswamy was born on 17 September 1953 in Colombo,Ceylon. She was the younger daughter of civil servant Rajendra Coomaraswamy (Roving Raju) and his wife Wijeyamani. Her father’s occupation at the United Nations meant that her childhood was spent in New York. Her paternal grandfather C. Coomaraswamy was a civil servant and her maternal grandfather S. K. Wijeyaratnam was chairman of Negombo Urban Council. [4] She has one elder brother,Indrajit Coomaraswamy. She is a graduate of the United Nations International School in New York City. She received her B.A. from Yale University,her J.D. from Columbia University,an LLM from Harvard University and honorary PhDs from Amherst College,the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,the University of Edinburgh,the University of Essex and the CUNY School of Law.[ citation needed ]
She was also a student of the late United States Supreme Court Justice and pioneer feminist litigator Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Columbia.
Coomaraswamy is a lawyer by training and formerly the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission,is an internationally known human rights advocate who has worked as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (1994-2003).
In her reports to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights,she has written on violence in the family,violence in the community,violence against women during armed conflict and the problem of international trafficking. A strong advocate on women's rights,she has intervened on behalf of women throughout the world seeking clarification from governments in cases involving violence against women. She also compiled a report on "comfort women",citing Seiji Yoshida's remark (his testimony was later judged to be a fabrication), [5] and has conducted field visits to Japan and Korea on the problem of "comfort women",Rwanda,Colombia,Haiti and Indonesia with regard to violence against women in war time,Poland,India,Bangladesh and Nepal on the issue of trafficking,the United States on women in prisons,Brazil on domestic violence,and Cuba on violence against women generally.[ citation needed ]
Coomaraswamy was appointed Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in May 2003. She has served as a member of the Global Faculty of the New York University School of Law. She also taught a summer course at New College,Oxford,every year on the International Human Rights of Women from 1996-2006. She has published,including two books on constitutional law and numerous articles on ethnic studies and the status of women.[ citation needed ]
In 2014,Coomaraswamy was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as lead author on a Global Study on the implementation of UNSC resolution 1325,on women,peace and security. The Global Study will be presented to the Secretary-General and to the public in October,2015,when the Security Council will conduct a High-level Review to assess progress at the global,regional and national levels in implementing resolution 1325 (2000).
In January 2008,the United Nations requested that Coomaraswamy,as special representative for children in armed conflict,be allowed to observe the American military tribunal of child soldier Omar Khadr,but she was denied entrance. [6]
In May 2011,Coomaraswamy gave a lecture entitled "Children and Armed Conflict:The International Response" at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace &Justice Distinguished Lecture Series.[ citation needed ]
In November 2011,Coomaraswamy gave a lectured entitled "Human Rights:Impact of Armed Conflict on Children" through Monmouth University's Institute for Global Understanding's United Nations Academic Impact Lecture Series.[ citation needed ]
The President of Sri Lanka conferred on her the title of Deshamanya,a national honour. She has also received the International Law Award of the American Bar Association,the Human Rights Award of the International Human Rights Law Group,the Bruno Kreisky Award of 2000,the Leo Ettinger Human Rights Prize of the University of Oslo,Archbishop Oscar Romero Award of the University of Dayton,the William J. Butler Award from the University of Cincinnati,and the Robert S. Litvack Award from McGill University. In November 2005,in recognition of her service to the country and the world.[ citation needed ]
Children in the military,including state armed forces,non-state armed groups,and other military organizations,may be trained for combat,assigned to support roles,such as cooks,porters/couriers,or messengers,or used for tactical advantage such as for human shields,or for political advantage in propaganda. Children have been recruited for participation in military operations and campaigns throughout history and in many cultures.
Sunila Abeysekera was a Sri Lankan human rights campaigner. She worked on women's rights in Sri Lanka and in the South Asia region for decades as an activist and scholar. Quitting a career as a singer,Abeysekera briefly joined the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and then founded the Women and Media Collective in 1984. As head of the INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre,she monitored human rights violations by all parties in the civil war. She received the United Nations Human Rights Award in 1999 and the Didi Nirmala Deshpande South Asian Peace and Justice Award in 2013.
Human rights in Sri Lanka provides for fundamental rights in the country. The Sri Lanka Constitution states that every person is entitled to freedom of thought,conscience and religion,including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. And,that every person is equal before the law.
The Sri Lankan state has been accused of state terrorism against the Tamil minority as well as the Sinhalese majority,during the two Marxist–Leninist insurrections. The Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been charged with massacres,indiscriminate shelling and bombing,extrajudicial killings,rape,torture,disappearance,arbitrary detention,forced displacement and economic blockade. According to Amnesty International,state terror was institutionalized into Sri Lanka's laws,government and society.
Deshamanya is the second-highest national honour of Sri Lanka awarded by the Government of Sri Lanka as a civil honour. It is awarded for "highly meritorious service",and is conventionally used as a title or prefix to the recipient's name.
Christopher Gregory Weeramantry,AM was a Sri Lankan lawyer who was a Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1991 to 2000,serving as its vice-president from 1997 to 2000. Weeramantry was a judge of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka from 1967 to 1972. He also served as an emeritus professor at Monash University and as the president of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms.
Sarathambal Saravanbavananthatkurukal or better known as Sarathambal was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was gang raped and killed on 28 December 1999. This became an internationally known incident of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
The war was waged for over a quarter of a century,with an estimated 70,000 killed by 2007. Immediately following the end of war,on 20 May 2009,the UN estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. However,in 2011,referring to the final phase of the war in 2009,the Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka stated,"A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths." The large majority of these civilian deaths in the final phase of the war were said to have been caused by indiscriminate shelling of a formerly designated 'No Fire Zone' by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
War crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war are war crimes and crimes against humanity which the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been accused of committing during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides;executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides;enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them;sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military;the systematic denial of food,medicine,and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone;child recruitment,hostage taking,use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
Chandra Lekha Sriram (1971–2018) was Professor of Law at the University of London,School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She has written and lectured widely on conflict prevention,post-conflict peacebuilding,human rights,international criminal law,and transitional justice. Her most recent monograph,Peace as governance:Power-sharing,armed groups,and contemporary peace negotiations (2008),offered a comparative critical examination of the use of power-sharing incentives in peace processes in Colombia,Sri Lanka,and Sudan. Previous monographs on transitional justice and international criminal accountability,Confronting past human rights violations:Justice versus peace in times of transition (2004) and Globalizing Justice for mass atrocities:A revolution in accountability (2005);examined transitional justice and internationalized and externalized criminal justice processes in or for Sierra Leone,Timor-Leste,El Salvador,Honduras,Sri Lanka,South Africa,and Argentina.
On 4 March 1994 the Human Rights Council passed Resolution 1994/45 on the question of integrating the rights of women into the human rights mechanisms of the United Nations and the elimination of violence against women. This Resolution established the mandate of the "Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women its causes and consequences". The initial appointment was for a three-year period. As of November 2021 the special rapporteur was Reem Alsalem. who is controversial for her anti-trans views and who according to legal scholar Jens Theilen is "using women’s rights as a tool to undermine trans rights."
The stoning of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was a public execution carried out by the Al-Shabaab militant group on 27 October 2008 in the southern port town of Kismayo,Somalia. Duhulow's father and aunt stated that she was a 13-year-old girl and that she had been arrested and stoned to death after trying to report that she had been raped. Initial reports had stated that Duhulow was a 23-year-old woman found guilty of adultery;she was,however,under the age of marriage eligibility. The execution took place in a public stadium attended by about 1,000 bystanders,several of whom attempted to intervene but were shot by the militants.
Aisling Swaine is a professor of Peace,Security and International Law at University College Dublin.
Rashida Manjoo is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town and a social activist involved in the eradication of violence against women and gender-based violence. Manjoo was the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women from June 2009 to July 2015.
Gender inequality in Sri Lanka is centered on the inequalities that arise between men and women in Sri Lanka. Specifically,these inequalities affect many aspects of women's lives,starting with sex-selective abortions and male preferences,then education and schooling in childhood,which influence job opportunities,property rights,access to health and political participation in adulthood. While Sri Lanka is ranked well on several gender equality indices in comparison to other countries in the region,there are also some sources that question the verity of these indices. However,globally,Sri Lanka ranks relatively lower on gender equality indices. Overall,this pattern of social history that disempowers females produces a cycle of undervaluing females,providing only secondary access to health care and schooling and thus fewer opportunities to take on high level jobs or training,which then exacerbates the issue of low political participation and lowered social rights,a cycle studied and noted on by Dr. Elaine Enarson,a disaster sociologist studying the connection between disaster and the role of women.
University of Oslo's Human Rights Award honours individuals who have made important contributions in different fields. The award was launched in 1986 and since then,it is awarded every year to notable people from different walks of life. Those years when the award was not distributed are 1997,1999,2003,and 2004.
The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC) is an office of the United Nations Secretariat tasked with serving the United Nations' spokesperson and political advocate on conflict-related sexual violence,the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC). The Special Representative holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the UN and chairs the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The mandate of the SRSG-SVC was established by Security Council Resolution 1888,introduced by Hillary Clinton,and the first Special Representative,Margot Wallström,took office in 2010. The current Special Representative is Pramila Patten of Mauritius,who was appointed by UN Secretary General António Guterres in 2017. The work of the SRSG-SVC is supported by the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict,co-led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPO),Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP),also established under Security Council Resolution 1888.
Tejshree Thapa was a Nepalese human rights lawyer. She was recognized for her role in investigating and documenting human rights violations,including widespread sexual violence and other atrocities committed during the Yugoslav Wars,the Sri Lanka Civil War,and the Nepal Civil War.
Rita Izsák-Ndiaye is a human rights expert and former Hungarian diplomat. She has worked on human,minority and youth rights in various NGOs,the Hungarian Government and with international organizations. She served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues between 2011 and 2017,as well as member and Rapporteur of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination between 2018-2022. In 2021 and 2022,she was the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Children and Security. As of autumn 2022,she is Senior Adviser on Anti-Racism at UNDP.