Chandra Kalindi Roy Henriksen is vocal in the event on ‘Future of Indigenous Languages’
News Desk:
“When you speak from the heart, you speak from your own mother tongue.” Inspiring panel discussed at the United Nations library on the importance of cooperating and acting now to protect, revitalize and promote indigenous languages as part of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages.
Chief of the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), Chandra Kalindi Roy (Chakma) Henriksen was one of the speakers of the event on ‘Future of Indigenous Languages’. It is to be mentioned that Chandra Kalindi Roy Henriksen was born in 1956 at Rangamati. She was the first child of the ex-Chakma Circle Chief Tridev Roy and his first wife Rani Arati Roy.
Chandra attended missionary schools in Chittagong and studied law at the Punjab University in Lahore and the American University in Washington, DC. Following the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Roy and much of her family chose to remain in independent Bangladesh after her father abdicated the Chakma throne and left for self-imposed exile in Pakistan. She is basically a lawyer. She is a member of the Chakma royal family from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. She is the elder sister of present Chakma Circle Chief Barrister Debashish Roy. She got married to a Norwegian lawyer John Bernard Henriksen.
After working with several law firms in the United States, Roy joined the United Nations and served in the International Labour Organization in Geneva for many years. Having left the ILO in 2000, she became a consultant and researcher on the rights of indigenous people worldwide. At present Chandra Kalindi Roy is working as an advocate on the rights of indigenous people and Chief of the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
She authored several publications on the plight of indigenous minorities. She helped to establish the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). She also worked at the Equality and Employment Branch of the ILO legal department and was an instrumental in establishing an ILO project on Convention No. 169.
Youtube Link:
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