Maja Daruwala - Senior Advisor, New Delhi Office

Maja Daruwala is currently Senior Advisor at CHRI, particularly focussing on the Access to Justice Programme. She was Director of CHRI for twenty years, until September 2016.

Maja has been working to advocate for rights and social justice for over forty years. A barrister by training, she is actively engaged in numerous human rights initiatives, and concentrates on issues relating to civil liberties including police reform, prison reform, right to information, legal empowerment, non-discrimination, women's rights, freedom of expression, and human rights advocacy capacity building. Maja’s interests lie particularly in the area of systemic reforms. She works tirelessly to demystify human rights, and simplify technical issues of law and policy, for a variety of audiences. She focuses on mechanisms to reduce the distance between the standard and the practise. 

Maja has lived and worked in India, England, Singapore and Sri Lanka. She sits on several charitable boards including the International Women’s Health Coalition, NAMATI, International Record Management Trust, Public Affairs Centre (PAC) Bangalore. She is a recipient of the Nani Palkiwala Award for protection and preservation of civil liberties in India. Maja believes the only way to be optimistic about the future is to invent it!