Salma Yusuf is a Member of the Advisory Board of World BEYOND War. She is based in Sri Lanka. Salma is a Sri Lankan Lawyer and a Global Human Rights, Peace-building and Transitional Justice Consultant providing services to organizations at the international, regional, and national levels including to governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, international and national civil society, non-governmental organizations, regional and national institutions. She has served in multiple roles and capacities from being a Civil Society activist nationally and internationally, a University Lecturer and Researcher, a Journalist and Opinion Columnist, and most recently a Public Official of the Government of Sri Lanka where she led the process of drafting and developing of Sri Lanka’s first National Policy on Reconciliation which is the first in Asia. She has published extensively in scholarly journals including at the Seattle Journal of Social Justice, Sri Lanka Journal of International Law, Frontiers of Legal Research, American Journal of Social Welfare and Human Rights, Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth, International Affairs Review, Harvard Asia Quarterly and The Diplomat. Hailing from a “triple minority” background – namely, ethnic, religious and linguistic minority communities – Salma Yusuf has translated her heritage into professional acumen by developing a high degree of empathy to grievances, sophisticated and nuanced understanding of challenges, and cross-cultural sensitivity to the aspirations and needs of societies and communities she works with, in the pursuit of the ideals of human rights, law, justice and peace. She is a current sitting Member of the Commonwealth Women Mediators Network. She has a Master of Laws in Public International Law from Queen Mary University of London and a Bachelor of Laws Honours from University of London. She was called to the Bar and has been admitted as an Attorney-at-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. She has completed specialized fellowships at University of Toronto, University of Canberra, and American University of Washington.
