MONIKA KALRA VARMA, J.D.

Monika Kalra Varma is the Director of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights (RFK Center). Ms. Varma develops and oversees the RFK Center's programs, its day-to-day operations and long-term strategies.

A member of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights team since 2002, Ms. Varma has spearheaded the Center's extensive and innovative economic and social rights advocacy, including efforts to hold international actors accountable for extra-territorial economic rights violations. She has led advocacy campaigns targeting the United Nations and Member states, U.S. Administration and Congress, OAS Member states, International Financial Institutions, corporations, and regional bodies. Ms. Varma regularly speaks on domestic and international human rights issues before policy makers and civil society, and has published opinion editorials in the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, the Jurist and several online media outlets.

Ms. Varma currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Harvard-based Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Health and Human Rights Journal and is a Steering Committee member of the Lawyers Emergency Response Network for Haiti. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Global India Fund.

Prior to joining the RFK Center, Ms. Varma worked for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Hague, Netherlands as a legal officer with the Office of the Prosecutor. She was a member of the trial team which secured the Tribunal's first indictment and eventual conviction of the crime of terror against General Stanislav Galic, the Serb military commander in Sarajevo from 1992-1994.

Ms. Varma received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego. She attained a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California at Davis School of Law.

Monika Kalra Varma
1367 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 200
Washington, D.C. 20036
Tel: (202) 463-7575 Ext. 228
Fax: (202) 463-6606
monika@rfkcenter.org