Kamala Chandrakirana was born on October 2, 1930 in Indonesia. She built her career as an advocate for women’s rights, social justice, and democratic values in her home country Indonesia and across the world. Kamala got started in the world of advocacy in 1998, when she joined a volunteer group to respond to the May 1998 riots that took place across the country over a seven day period. She founded the National Commission on Violence Against Women, Indonesia’s primary mechanism for promoting women’s right, in 1998 and held the first Secretary General position from 1998 until 2003 before stepping down to become a Chairperson from 2003 to 2009. In 2009, she co-founded Musawah with other activists, academics, and progressive religious scholars with the intention of creating “a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family”. During this same time period, Kamala chaired the National Commission on Violence Against Women, which studied and documented systemic violations of women’s rights, looking at historical and current examples in Aceh, Papua, Post, and the systemic rapes and killings that took place in 1998 and 1965 respectively. She has been a member of the United Nations Working Group on Discrimination Against Women in Law and Practice since 2011 and has also served within the organization as a Women’s Human Rights Expert.