Sunila passes away

9 September 2013 12:28 pm

Civil society activist Sunila Abesekera passed away in Colombo a short while ago, family members said. Sunila Abeysekera is an award winning human rights campaigner.

She was born in 1952 (61) in Sri Lanka and has worked on women's rights and human rights issues in Sri Lanka and in the South Asia region for over 20 years as an activist and scholar.

In 1994 she received an M.A. in Women and Development from the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, Netherlands, and won that year's award for the best research paper.

Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan presented Abeysekera with a UN human rights award in 1999. She was also honoured for her work by the Human Rights Watch.