Anita Ramasastry

Chair of the Working group on Business and Human rights

Ms. Ramasastry is the Roland L. Hjorth Professor of Law and the Director of the Graduate Program in Sustainable International Development at the University of Washington School Of Law. She researches and teaches in the fields of law and development, anti-corruption, international commercial law and business and human rights.

From 2009-2012, Ramasastry served as a senior advisor to the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce. She has authored numerous scholarly articles and reports focused on emerging issues in business and human rights including the influential survey on access to remedy, Commerce, Crime and Conflict (with Mark Taylor and Bob Thompson) and recently has co-chaired an independent commission on Experts with Justice Ian Binnie, focused on commerce, crime and human rights. Ramasastry has advised many intergovernmental and civil society organizations including the World Bank, USAID, the Institute for Human Rights and Business, BSR, Amnesty International and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable.

Ramasastry is a recurring visiting professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights as well as the Central European University in Budapest. She is a founding co editor in chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal (Cambridge). Ramasastry is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and the University of Sydney