Sooka and Sheeran join Sri Lanka campaign
Wednesday, 22 August 2012 
The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice have today named two new members of their advisory council: Scott Sheeran and Yasmin Sooka.
Yasmin Sooka is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa. She is one of three co-authors of the April 2011 Panel of Experts' report on Sri Lanka done at the request of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
Prior to joining the Foundation, she was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, serving first for three years as Deputy Chair to the Human Rights Violations Committee and then as the chair of the committee. She authored the final report of the TRC. During 2002 and 2004 she was appointed by the UN as an international commissioner for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone.
She has consulted and assisted the governments of Ghana, Nepal, Afghanistan, Burundi, and Liberia in setting up truth commissions. Yasmin also serves on The Board of Trustee’s for Black Sash Trust, International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, is Executive member for Niwano Peace Foundation as well as Advisory member for Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and Institute for International Law.
Scott Sheeran is a Senior Lecturer, and Co-Director of the LLM in International Human Rights Law, at the School of Law and Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. He is co-editor with Professor Sir Nigel Rodley of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on International Human Rights Law.
Scott’s prior experience includes a number of years in the New Zealand Foreign Service, including a three-year posting as the Legal Adviser at the New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. During this time, Scott was appointed Vice-Chair of the UN Sixth (Legal) Committee of the General Assembly, and was a member of the Bureau of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Assembly of State Parties.
Scott was also previously a legal counsel in a constitutional law firm in New Zealand and a consultant for The Boston Consulting Group. Scott has a Master of Laws (International law) from the University of Cambridge, and was a UNITAR Fellow at Columbia Law School.
