Imrana Jalal Extended as Panel Chair Through December 2021; Ramanie Kunanayagam to Become Chair in January 2022

Inspection Panel members have unanimously voted to extend Imrana Jalal’s term as Panel chair through the end of 2021 and selected Panel Member Ramanie Kunanayagam to succeed her as chair on January 1, 2022.

Ms. Jalal became chair in December 2018. Her current term as chair was to have ended on June 30, 2021. 

A gender specialist, lawyer and development practitioner, Ms. Jalal, a Fiji national, became a Panel member on January 1, 2018. Immediately prior to joining the Panel, she was a principal social development specialist for the Asian Development Bank. Ms. Jalal was a commissioner from 1999-2001 on the initial Fiji Human Rights Commission, the first of its kind in the Pacific Island countries. She was elected a commissioner on the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in 2006 and served on the Commission’s Executive Board from 2011-2017. Ms. Jalal earned a master’s degree with a focus on gender and development from the University of Sydney, and an LLB and LLM (Hons.) in international law from the University of Auckland. Her term as a Panel member ends on December 31, 2022.

Ms. Kunanayagam, a Sri Lankan-born Australian citizen, was appointed to the Inspection Panel on December 16, 2018. Early in her career, she spent more than 10 years doing fieldwork in a remote part of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. She has held leadership positions in sustainability in both the private sector (working for two FTSE 10 companies) and the nonprofit sector. Most recently before joining the Panel she was the Global Head for Social Performance and Human Rights for BG Group. She is a member of the boards of two international non-profit development organizations—RESOLVE and the Institute of Human Rights and Business. She earned a master’s degree in anthropology from Monash University, Australia. Her term as a Panel member ends on December 15, 2023.