Bio
Sarala Emmanuel is a feminist activist and researcher based in Batticaloa, Eastern Sri Lanka. She has worked for the past 20 years with communities of primarily Tamil speaking women affected by war and violence. Apart from supporting long stranding struggles of truth, accountability, and justice for war time violations, Sarala also has been working closely with rural women’s groups on the impact of the debt crisis, climate justice, economic rights, labour rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, rights of women living with disabilities and responding to gender-based violence. Sarala is a member of the Sub Committee of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. Sarala is a visiting lecturer at the Open University of Sri Lanka and the Post Graduate Institute of the University of Colombo. She is a founder member of independent spaces such as the Feminist Collective for Economic Justice and the Vaavi Collective, providing alternative discourses on the economic crisis and debt justice in Sri Lanka. Her research areas include women and peace building, sexual violence and transitional justice, land dispossession, women living with disabilities, rural women food producers and socio-economic rights. At the regional and international levels, she is a member of feminist networks such as SANGAT South Asia, APWLD, Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) and DAWN.
