Native name চন্দ্র রায় হেনরিকসন Occupation Lawyer | Nationality Bangladeshi Parents Tridev Roy | |
Born 1956 (age 60–61) Rangamati, East Pakistan, Pakistan Books Land Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh | ||
Chandra Kalindi Roy-Henriksen (born 1956) is a Bangladeshi advocate on the rights of indigenous people and Chief of the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She is a member of the Chakma Royal Family from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Roy is married to Norwegian Sami lawyer John Bernard Henriksen. She is the elder sister of the current Chakma Raja Barrister Debashish Roy.
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Early life and career
Roy was born in Rangamati in 1956 as the first child of the fiftieth Chakma Raja Tridev Roy and first wife Rani Arati Roy. Roy 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.
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. She authored several publications on the plight of indigenous minorities, including in her native Bangladesh.
UN advocate
In 2010, Roy was appointed as the head of the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at UN headquarters in New York City.