The Duty to Prevent, Guarantor Institutions and State Capture: Theorizing from the Global South

Event on April 24

"The Duty to Prevent, Guarantor Institutions and State Capture: Theorizing from the Global South” was an engaging discussion that examined the critical link between a state's responsibility to prevent human rights violations and the design of its constitutional institutions. Drawing on experiences from the Global South, including Nepal, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, panelists Dinesha Samararatne and Manisha Dissanayake 25’ explored Guarantor Institutions such as Elections Commissions and Human Rights Commissions.

Speaker

Dinesha Samararatne is a Professor at the Department of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Senior Fellow of the Melbourne Law School, Australia and an independent expert to the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka. Her research interests include judicial review, constitutional resilience, women and constitutional law, guarantor institutions, academic freedom and the relevance of the global south in comparative constitutional law. She read for her LLM at Harvard Law in 2009 as a Junior Fulbright Scholar.

Moderator

Manisha Dissanayake (LL.M. 25’) is an Attorney-at-Law practicing in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, with a focus on human rights and constitutional law. She is the Founding Director of The Arka Initiative, an NGO advancing sexual and reproductive health in the grassroots of Sri Lanka. She holds an LL.B. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as an M.A. from the University of Colombo.