Akila Radhakrishnan is the former president of the Global Justice Center, where she directed GJC’s strategies and efforts to establish legal precedents protecting human rights and ensuring gender equality. In 2010, she helped to conceptualize GJC’s August 12th Campaign to ensure access to abortion services for girls and women raped in war as a matter of right and has since led legal and advocacy efforts on the project. Radhakrishnan led GJC’s Gender and Genocide project, including to ensure justice and accountability for the Yazidi genocide and was a key member of GJC’s Burma project team. In her role, Radhakrishnan authored numerous shadow reports, legal briefs and advocacy documents and provided legal expertise to domestic and international stakeholders and policymakers, including the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, the European Union and state governments. Radhakrishnan has been published widely on issues of international law, gender equality and human rights, including in the New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, Women Under Siege, Ms. Magazine, and Rewire.
Prior to the Global Justice Center, she has worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, DPK Consulting and Drinker, Biddle & Reath, LLP. Radhakrishnan received her J.D. with a concentration in international law from the University of California, Hastings and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Art History from the University of California, Davis.
Specific areas of expertise include US abortion restrictions including the Helms Amendment and the Global Gag Rule and how those restrictions are enforced and impact women on the ground.
Further areas of expertise include the genocide ISIS is committing against the Yazidi and the non-gendered crimes of genocide they are committing against Yazidi women and girls specifically rape, kidnapping and forced pregnancy.
Also working with women's rights groups on the ground in Myanmar to push for full equality under the law and constitution reform. This includes using international law mechanisms like the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
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