Dilrukshi Handunnetti

Journalist

Dilrukshi Handunnetti is a Sri Lankan journalist, currently working with The Sunday Leader as its Editor Investigations. She is a lawyer by training having specialized in international law.

A journalist for over 17 years, she has extensively covered the areas of politics, conflict, environment, culture, and history and gender issues. Besides writing the parliamentary column for the newspaper, she also writes and edits all investigative stories carried in her publication.

Ms Handunnetti has widely traveled within and outside Sri Lanka covering the ethnic conflict from a non-military perspective and written extensively on issues of good governance, graft and corruption.

She has received several scholarships to be trained aboard including the British High Commission scholarship to study and report on the Northern Ireland conflict as well as recently, a US State Department initiative that offered a crash course in investigative journalism to 22 investigative journalists around the world.

Many times she has been a speaker at the United Nation Environment Programme(UNEP) given her interest in climate change. She has won several fellowships and scholarships in this particular area.

Ms Handunnetti won five coveted national journalism awards in Sri Lanka ranging from the Young Reporter of the Year 2001, Best Environment Reporter of the year 2002, Best Environment Reporter of the year 2003, Best English Journalist of the Year 2004 (Merit) Award and D B Dhanapala Award for the Best English Journalist of the Year 2005, all presented by the Editors' Guild of Sri Lanka.

Besides she was jointly awarded the "Best Science Journalism on the world wide web" presented to UK based SciDivNet's nine member team of writers for "outstanding Asian tsunami coverage" presented by The Association of British Science Writers at its annual awards ceremony held in London on July 19,2006.

She has made contributions to international media, written many country chapters on a variety of topics to regional publications and regularly writes to Himal South Asian, a regional current affairs magazine published in Katmandu.