Radhika Coomaraswamy, a graduate of the United Nations International School in New York, received her B.A. from Yale University, her J.D. from Columbia University, an LLM from Harvard University and an honorary PhD from Amherst College.
Dr. Coomaraswamy was the director of International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo until 2006.  She resigned from her directorship at ICES to take over the position of Under-Secretary-General, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict in April 2006.
During her tenure at the ICES, she gave leadership to projects and programmes on multiculturalism, federalism and constitutional reform as well as education policy, and judicial approaches to pluralism and special focus on women’s issues. 
Dr. Coomaraswamy was appointed as the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in 2003 - 06, and is an internationally known human rights advocate who has done outstanding work as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (1994-2003).
She has published widely. She is the author of two books on constitutional law. The first is A Crisis of Legitimacy: - The Anglo-American Constitutional Tradition in Sri Lanka and Ideology and The Constitution: - Essays on Constitutional Jurisprudence. She has co-edited two books with Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, The Ethical Dilemmas of Development, and The Judiciary in Plural Societies, She has also co-edited a book on social theory with Nira Wickremesinghe entitled Introduction to Social Theory. She had co-edited a book with Dilrukshi Fonseka titled Peace Work: Women, Armed Conflict and Negotiation, Kali for Women, 2005 and another booked was co-edited with Nimanthi Rajasingham titled Constellations of Violence: Gender, violence and representation in South Asia, Women Unlimited, 2008 . She has also published numerous articles on ethnic studies and the status of women.
Radhika Coomaraswamy has won many awards. These include; The International Law Award of the American Bar Association, The Human Rights Award of the International Human Rights Law Group, The Bruno Kreisky Award of 2000 and The Leo Ettinger Human Rights prize of the University of Oslo, Cesar Romero Award of the University of Dayton, the William J. Butler Award from the University of Cincinnati, and the Robert S. Litvack Award from McGill University. In November 2005, in recognition of her service to the country and the world, the President of Sri Lanka conferred on her the title of Deshamanya, a prestigious national honour.