Neshan Gunasekera is a Sri Lankan international lawyer, educationist, facilitator, and environmentalist whose work spans international humanitarian law, human rights, peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and sustainable development. He holds an LLB (Sri Lanka) and an MA (Colombo). As a student he met the late Judge C.G. Weeramantry, former Vice President of the International Court of Justice, an encounter that drew him into international law and led him to serve as Director (2007 to 2012) of the centre Weeramantry founded. Gunasekera has been a Visiting Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden, where he focused on the human rights dimensions of environmental law, and he serves as Lead Counsel for Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions at the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). From 2016 to 2022 he provided technical guidance to the United Nations on peace and governance in Sri Lanka, helping convene UN agencies, government, and civil society around the Sustainable Development Goals. He is active with the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Earth Trusteeship Initiative, and has advanced the concept of Earth trusteeship as an ethical and legal framework for governance. In 2020 he received the H.E. Judge C.G. Weeramantry International Justice Award for his work for justice and inclusion during and after conflict. In May 2025 he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the World Future Council, having previously served the Council as a policy advisor and councillor.
