Wilson Center Experts
Rangita de Silva de Alwis
Dr. Rangita de Silva de Alwis was the Director of Women in Public Service Project’s 2012 Institute at Wellesley College. Rangita was the Director of International Human Rights Policy at the Wellesley Centers for Women and Faculty at the Madeleine Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley College. She is also the inaugural Susan McGee Bailey Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She will be a Fulbright Specialist at the Asian University for Women this summer. Rangita will co- teach Human Rights Theory and Practice at Wellesley College as Distinguished Visiting Lecturer next fall.
Rangita has worked globally with a vast network of academic institutions, civil society and government organizations to develop innovative human rights initiatives around the world including, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Georgia, Egypt, Russia, Kenya, Turkey, Morocco, Bulgaria, Romania, Lebanon, South Africa and Burma. She leads the Women’s Leadership Network in Muslim Communities at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She helped convene the Asia Cause Lawyer Network in India and the Women’s Watch- China. She has worked in partnership with China’s leading women’s rights advocates on new developments in gender and law reform in China for over 10 years. She has testified twice before the Congressional Executive Commission on China on the status of women’s rights in China. She also advised UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP and the U.N. Secretariat on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on state accountability under the relevant treaties and the intersections of the different treaties. Most recently, she developed a Gender Supplement to the U.N. Secretary General’s Guidelines on Disability.
She is a Gender Advisor to Vietnam’s Ministry of Justice and National Assembly. She has published with the United Nations (Child Marriage and the Law; Girl Child Labour; The Status of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Legislative Compliance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; and the Intersections of the CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the child) and in law journals including in the: Yale Journal of Law and Feminism; Texas Journal of Gender and the Law; University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Journal; Duke Journal of Gender and the Law; UCLA Pacific Rim Journal; University of Washington’s Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal; and Michigan State Journal of International law. Rangita has created a curriculum and materials for the Asian University for Women’s course on Women Leading Change in Asia.
Rangita has a Doctorate in Law (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School and was a Teaching Fellow with the European Law Research Institute at Harvard Law School and a Research Fellow with the Women and Public Policy program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She served on the Advisory Group brought together by UNIFEM and UNDP to develop United Nations Evaluation Guidelines and on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Democracy Network, IRI.