Honorary graduates 2011-12

Ambiga Sreenevasan (LLD)

Thursday 21 July 2011 11:30am

Ambiga is a practising litigation lawyer in Malaysia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Exeter in 1979. She was called to the English Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1980 and to the Malaysian Bar in 1982. She served on the Malaysian Bar Council from 2002 until March 2010. She was Chairman and President of the Malaysian Bar from March 2007 until March 2009.

She presently heads Bersih 2.0, a citizen’s movement for free and fair elections. She serves on the executive committee of the Women’s Aid Organisation and is involved in the Bar Council Special Committee on the Orang Asli (indigenous persons) rights. She is a Director of the Securities Industry Dispute Resolution Centre. She has been involved in the drafting and presenting of several papers and memoranda on issues relating to the rule of law, the judiciary, the administration of justice, legal aid, religious conversion and other human rights issues.

As President of the Malaysian Bar she played a significant role in the establishing of a panel of eminent persons, together with LAWASIA, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute and Transparency International-Malaysia in the year 2008. This panel reviewed the judicial crisis of 1988 and issued a report which was the first of its kind, setting an important precedent for organisations to establish their own panel inquiring into abuses of power.

She was one of eight recipients of the US Secretary of State “International Women of Courage” Award in 2009.