Ambika Satkunanathan

Ambika Satkunanathan is a human rights expert based in Sri Lanka. For twenty five years she has worked with persons and communities impacted by human rights violations and assisted them to access remedies. From Oct 2015 to March 2020, she was a Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, where she led the first national study of prisons. Prior to that  for 8 years she was a Legal Advisor to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

She is a board member of the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Torture, a member of the Executive Council of the World Organisation Against Torture, the Membership Council of Penal Reform International, the Network of Experts of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and the Steering Committee of Just Futures Collaborative.

Her research, advocacy and activism have focused on counter-terrorism law and policy, drug control and rehabilitation, transitional justice, custodial violence, penal policy, militarization and gender. Her research on drug control, detention and rehabilitation in Sri Lanka, the first such study, was published in August 2021 by Harm Reduction International. Her publications include contributions to the International Journal of Transitional Justice, the Oxford Handbook of Gender & Conflict, the Routledge Handbook on Human Rights in South Asia, Feminist Studies and Contemporary South Asia.

She is Chairperson of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, a local grantmaking organisation in Sri Lanka and was a founder member and Vice Chairperson of Urgent Action Fund- Asia and Pacific, a feminist regional grantmaking organisation.

She was an Open Society Fellow from 2020-2022. She has a B.A. and LL.B from Monash University Australia and a LL.M from University of Nottingham, where she was a Chevening Scholar.