Amal de Chickera is a Sri Lankan human rights lawyer, advocate and activist, with expertise in the right to nationality, statelessness and discrimination. He is a co-founder and one of the Co-Directors of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI). He is also a founding member and serves on the Interim Core Group of the Global Movement Against Statelessness.

Amal has researched, advocated, written, spoken, delivered training and served as an expert on statelessness and related issues for the UN, NGOs and academia, since 2008. At ISI, Amal has particularly focused on developing the organizations programs on movement building, discrimination and advocacy. Amal believes in the power of the arts to shape and inform our understanding and response to issues of social justice, and has (co) authored children’s books and graphic novels to bring the challenge of statelessness to new audiences.

Before co-founding the Institute, Amal led the statelessness work of the Equal Rights Trust. He was also a co-founder of the European Network on Statelessness, and a founding member of Stages – a Sri Lankan theatre group. A member of the Sri Lankan Bar, Amal holds an LLM from University College London and an LLB from the University of Colombo.