Tamara Kunanayakam was the former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Sri Lankan Ambassador to Holy See.
22 Facts About Tamara Kunanayakam
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Tamara Kunanayakam's father was an Anglican Sri Lankan Tamil from Chundikuli in Jaffna who was a member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Government Clerical Services Union.
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Tamara Kunanayakam's mother was a Hindu Indian Tamil from Badulla.
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Tamara Kunanayakam's maternal grandfather Gnanapandithan was a businessman in Badulla who had sympathies for the Indian National Congress and the Indian independence movement.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was educated at Ladies College, Colombo and briefly at Vembadi Girls' High School in Jaffna.
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Tamara Kunanayakam had intended to go to Netherlands but ended up in Switzerland.
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Tamara Kunanayakam worked in Geneva before going to Germany and enrolling at the University of Heidelberg.
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Tamara Kunanayakam graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Economics and International Relations.
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Tamara Kunanayakam then returned to Geneva and enrolled at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
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Tamara Kunanayakam graduated in 1982 with a Master's degree in International Relations.
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Tamara Kunanayakam is fluent in Tamil, Sinhala, English, French, German and Spanish.
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Tamara Kunanayakam supplied information on the riots to World Vision International who presented some of them to Junius Richard Jayewardene, President of Sri Lanka.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was a researcher for the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo and Antenna International, Geneva.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was a consultant to the UNDP in sub-Saharan Africa in 1985.
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Tamara Kunanayakam returned to the Lutheran World Federation in 1986 and worked there until 1988.
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In March 1987 Tamara Kunanayakam represented the World Student Christian Movement at the 43rd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights and spoke about the torture, disappearances, illegal detentions and other abuses prevalent in Sri Lanka at that time.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was a human rights officer for the United Nations Centre for Human Rights from 1989 to 1990.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was first officer at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1994 to 2005, heading a unit on disappearances.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was appointed as Minister Counsellor to the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Brazil in 2007.
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Tamara Kunanayakam was Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Cuba from 2009 to 2011.
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Tamara Kunanayakam is the founder of the Foundation on Multilateralism in Geneva and a founding member of the Observatory of Globalization in Paris, the South Group in Geneva and the Asia-Pacific Task Force, Geneva.
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Tamara Kunanayakam is author of several publications on international relations, including on the international monetary system, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the United Nations reform process, and humanitarian interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.