News stories by Rangita de Silva de Alwis

NEW YORK, Sep 07 (IPS) - The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that has yet to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), rendering it “strange bedfellows” with Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Tonga, and Palau.

PHILADELPHIA, Aug 27 (IPS) - Columbia's Katherine Phillips's longitudinal research shows that diversity makes us smarter and spurs innovation. Homogeneity of any kind can hinder the exchange of ideas and hamper intellectual ferment. As Philips has argued, expanding diversity in the workplace is a way to inject fresh ideas into a stagnant ecosystem.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 (IPS) - Rangita de Silva de Alwis* is Associate Dean of International Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School & Special Adviser to the President of Wellesley College on Women's Leadership.

"From the tuk tuk drivers in Cambodia… to the school children in South Africa, women and men and girls and boys are taking a stand to prevent violence against women," says Executive Director of UN Women and Under Secretary General Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 (IPS) - Rangita de Silva de Alwis is Associate Dean of International Affairs, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Global Adviser, UN SDG Fund & UN Women High Level Working Group on Women's Access to Justice.

Recent developments around the world give support to the idea of the #MeToo movement's transformative potential. A postmodernist claim was that the feminist movement was essentialist and that no one expression of feminism can be applicable to women of different ethnicity, cultural, or class identity. The #Me Too movement has found expression in different cultural traditions and helped to challenge this theory. 

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 (IPS) - Rangita de Silva de Alwis is Associate Dean of International Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School & Advisor, UN Sustainable Development Goals FundSomething historic was initiated at the European Development Days (EDD) in early June: the EDD placed women and girls at the forefront of Sustainable Development. Since its inception in 2006, EDD has become a barometer for ideas in global development.

UNITED NATIONS, May 02 (IPS) - Rangita de Silva de Alwis* is Associate Dean of International Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School & Advisor, UN Sustainable Development Goals FundAt the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials, Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor, charged the world that submitting the enemy to the judgment of the law is "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 (IPS) - Rangita de Silva de Alwis is Associate Dean of International Affairs, University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Advisor, UN Sustainable Development Goals FundMarch 8th, 2018, International Women's Day, saw an extraordinary global mobilization for gender equality. In the last year, global movements for gender equality-- from marches to powerful grassroots organizing and viral social media campaigns, such as #MeToo and #TimesUp in the United States and other countries-- have galvanized the world's attention like never before.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 15 (IPS) - I first met Asma Jahangir, the champion of human rights in Pakistan, who died Sunday, as a teenager in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s. In a friendship that spanned political upheavals and turbulent transitions in Pakistan and in Sri Lanka, to the War on Terror in the US, Asma remained my mentor and muse.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 08 (IPS) - As the 62nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations in New York draws near, women from every corner of the world will convene to focus on the theme of CSW 2018: Challenges and Opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls. One of the major inquiries in this theme is women's economic empowerment.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 06 (IPS) - At this historic moment – this new report ("Business and SDG 16") is a tryst with destiny, one that fulfills a promise that was made both by the United Nations and the private sector at the launch of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.