Ambiga Sreenevasan

Dato Ambiga was appointed to the International Commission of Jurists in 2018.

As of 2015, she is the president of Hakam, Malaysia’s National Human Rights Society.

On September 21, 2012, Malaysia's New Straits Times published "Plot to destabilize government," which accused Bersih and other nongovernment organizations of plotting a conspiracy to destabilise the government using foreign funding. Sreenevasan and fellow Bersih organizers filed for defamation, which resulted in High Court Justice Lee Heng Cheong ordering the New Straits Times Press (NSTP) to pay damages to the plaintiffs. NSTP also issued an apology admitting the article was "false and without foundation."

In July 2011, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Law (LLD) by the University of Exeter.

Sreenevasan chaired Bersih 2.0, the organisation behind the July 2011 rally in Kuala Lumpur that drew 20,000 people. She summed up the main issues raised by Bersih as "unhappiness... in the Sarawak [election], unhappiness about corruption, [and] unhappiness about the lack of independence of our institutions." She said demands made during the first rally in 2007 have not been addressed, hence the follow-up rally.

The blogger Gopal Raj Kumar (believed to be a former radio journalist and lawyer) reported on in or around 2010 that Bersih leader Sreenevasan had received foreign funding for her involvement in Bersih. As well he reported that she "admitted to Bersih receiving some money from two US organisations – the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Open Society Institute (OSI) – for other projects, which she stressed were unrelated to the July 9 march."

As former president of the Malaysian Bar, she played a significant role in the establishing of a panel of eminent persons, together with LAWASIA, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute and Transparency International-Malaysia in the year 2008. This panel reviewed the judicial crisis of 1988 and issued a report which was the first of its kind, setting an important precedent for organisations to establish their own panel inquiring into abuses of power.

In 2008, as President of the Malaysian Bar she played a significant role in the establishing, in collaboration with LAWASIA, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute and Transparency International-Malaysia, of a panel to review the judicial crisis of 1998. The panel issued a report that was the first of its kind, setting a precedent for the establishment of panels to inquire into abuses of power.

Elected in March 2007, Sreenevasan is the second woman to serve as president of the Bar Council. Six months after assuming her leadership, she organised the "March for Justice," in Malaysia's administrative capital, calling for judicial reform and the investigation of a videotape allegedly showing a key lawyer fixing judicial appointments and judges' case assignments. Her public actions, and an intense lobbying campaign, led to the formation of a Royal Commission, which called for corrective action.

She was also a panellist of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration under the Malaysian Network Information Centre Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("MYDRP") from 2006 to 2009. She was chairperson of the Intellectual Property Sub-Committee of the Bar Council from September 2005 to March 2006. She was the vice-president of the Malaysian Intellectual Property Association in 2002.

She is a member of the Malaysian Intellectual Property Association and was its vice president in 2002. She is also a member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), as well as the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APPA). She headed Bersih 2.0, also called Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, a citizen’s movement for free and fair elections. In 2015, she led the Bersih 3.0 rally.

Sreenevasan has been a practising advocate and solicitor since March 1982. She is a founding partner of Sreenevasan, Advocates & Solicitors.

During her high school days, Sreenevasan studied at Convent Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur, where she also served as the Head Prefect in 1975. She graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Exeter in 1979, and was called to the English Bar at Gray's Inn in 1980. After having worked in two London law firms, she was subsequently admitted to the Malaysian Bar in 1982.

Dato' Ambiga Sreenevasan (Tamil: அம்பிகா சீனிவாசன் , romanized: Ampikā cīṉivācaṉ; born 1956) is a prominent Malaysian lawyer and human rights advocate, and is one of the eight recipients of the US International Women of Courage Award in 2009. She formerly served as the President of the Malaysian Bar Council from 2007 to 2009, and was former co-chairperson of Bersih, an NGO Coalition advocating for free and fair elections.