Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy has tendered her resignation from John Keells Holdings PLC board which will be effective from 31 December 2019.

The company said in a stock exchange filing that Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy has intimated to John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) that she wishes to resign from the directorate of the company with effect from 31 December for personal reasons and due to the impending busy travel schedule, arising from her professional commitments.

“Accordingly, Dr. Coomaraswamy will cease to be a director of the John Keells Holdings PLC from 1 January 2019,” the company said.

As at 2^nd December 2019, Dr. Coomaraswamy has no relevant interest in the shares of the company.

Joined to the board on the 1st October 2018, Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy served an independent non-executive director of the company.

Radhika Coomaraswamy is the sister of Central Bank Governor Dr.Indrajit Coomaraswamy, a man in the driving seat of the Sri Lankan economy.

Indrajit Coomaraswamy too held the same position before he became the Central Bank Governor.

Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy was the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict until 13 July 2012 in which then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. She was appointed to the Constitutional Council (Sri Lanka) as a civil representative on September 10, 2015, in which she served till September 2018.

Dr. Coomaraswamy received honorary PhDs from Amherst College, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Essex and several more, and she 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). She 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 widely, including two books on constitutional law and numerous articles on ethnic studies and the status of women.