Members of the Commission

Justice L.T.B. Dehideniya has an extensive tenure serving in the judiciary of Sri Lanka, spanning 39 years. He took oaths in 1980, following which he joined the judiciary in 1984, as a primary court judge, serving as a Magistrate and District court judge. He then served as a High Court judge in both the criminal and civil appellate courts as well as the Commercial High Court. In 2015, he was elevated as a Judge of the Court of Appeal and in 2017 as the President of the Court of Appeal. In 2018, he was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Besides his service in the judiciary, Justice Dehideniya has also served as the Director of the Judges’ Institute, as well as a member of the Board of Management of the same. He was also appointed as a member of the Judicial Service Commission in 2020. Justice Dehideniya has undergone numerous comprehensive training programs, including ones conducted by the Judge's Institute of Gopal, India, and the Judge's Institute of Malaysia. He has also taken part in various short-term training courses at various prestigious universities, such as ones in Hong Kong, Australia, England, and the USA. Upon his appointment by the Presidential Secretariat of Sri Lanka, he assumed duties as the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka on the 4th of July, 2023. He is married and has one daughter.

Professor Thaiyamuthu Thanaraj is at present the Head of School of Education under the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences in the Sri Lanka Institute of Information and Technology (SLIIT) which the largest private university in Sri Lanka. Before joining SLIIT he had served at the Faculty of Education/Horizon Campus, Faculty of Education/Open University of Sri Lanka, Distance Education Modernization Project/ADB, National Institute of Education, the Ministry of Education and at the national school system in various positions. Prof. Thanaraj has written/edited/translated a number of books on education, presented research papers in local and international conferences and also has published research papers in many journals. He has also delivered key note addresses on educational issues in local and international seminars and conferences. Further, he is also a reviewer/evaluator of academic papers and dissertations for local and foreign institutions.

Farzana Haniffa is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo. Haniffa obtained her Ph.D in Anthropology from Columbia University, New York. Her research and activist interests have concentrated on the social and political history of Muslim communities, on gender politics and on higher education in Sri Lanka. She has published on the Islamic reform movements, the history of minority involvement in electoral politics and the 2001 peace process, Northern Muslims’ place in discourses regarding return, resettlement and reconciliation, and on the post-war mobilizing of anti Muslim rhetoric. Haniffa’s writings on gender have looked at women in the Islamic piety movement in Sri Lanka, militarization and masculinity among eastern Muslim communities and the gendered nature of post-war anti Muslim sentiment. Haniffa was visiting fellow in Commonwealth studies at the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge (2018/19). In January 2016 Haniffa was appointed by the Prime Minister’s Office to the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms. In 2016 Haniffa was also a visiting research fellow at the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. Haniffa serves on the management council of the Social Scientists’ Association, the Board of Directors of the Law and Society Trust, and is a trustee of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust in Sri Lanka. In July 2023 Haniffa was appointed to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.

Mr. Nimal Punchihewa embarked upon his legal career in 1979, taking solemn oaths as an attorney at law. Over the years, he has distinguished himself through his unwavering commitment to public service and a diverse array of responsibilities. In 1994, Mr. Punchihewa assumed the role of a member of the Co-operative Employees Commission, and in 1997 became the Chairman of the Ceylon Fisheries Co-Operation. In 2000 he became the Vice Chairman of the National Industrial and Training Authority. After that from 2001 to 2006, he served as a Director of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. In 2006, he took on the role of the Additional Secretary of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka In 2008 he became the Chairman of the Land Reform Commission. Moreover, in 2016 he became the Legal Director of the Election Commission, and by 2020; he had risen to the position of Chairman of the Election Commission. In 2023 he assumed his duties as a Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. Mr. Punchihewa is an accomplished author, having published notable works such as "Rights of the Disabled" in 2009 and "Discrimination against Women" in the same year.

Dr. Gehan Gunatilleke is an attorney-at-law specializing in human rights law and constitutional law, and a founding partner of LexAG, a law firm based in Colombo. Dr. Gunatilleke is also a former advisor to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2015-2018) where he advised the government on international treaty compliance. He has served on several legislative drafting committees in Sri Lanka and was a co-drafter of the Enforced Disappearances Act and the Office for Reparations Act in 2018. Dr. Gunatilleke is currently a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, and an Early Career Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford. He is also a visiting lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, University of Colombo. Dr. Gunatilleke has a DPhil in Law and a Master's degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth scholar, and an LL.M from Harvard Law School, where he was a Fulbright scholar.