Ravi Karkara

Ravi Karkara is a trained Social Worker with commitment to advancing human rights, gender equality, inclusion and social justice. Ravi serves as the Global Advisor on Youth + Partnership with United Nations Millennium Campaign and UN-HABITAT, based in New York. He is the lead author of the groundbreaking report “Youth 21: Building the Architecture of Youth Engagement in the UN System,” by UN-Habitat, which contributed to the creation of United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth. Ravi represented UN-HABITAT as the Co-chair of the UN Interagency Network on Youth Development. Government of Sri Lanka appointed him as the Global Advisor to the World Conference on Youth in 2014, focusing on youth perspective in developing post-2015 development agenda. He has relentlessly supported United Nations SG’s My World 2015 survey in reaching close to 5.5 million youth. Ravi has been co-chairing the Policy Strategy Group for World We Want 2015 - a UN & CSO post-2015 data-curation-visualization platform. 

 He is serving as Strategic Adviser Partnership Beijing+20, Office of the Assistant Secretary-General/Deputy Executive Director, UN Women. He has committed his lifetime to women’s empowerment, strengthening human rights of girls, adolescent girls, young women and women, gender equality and social inclusion. He is a founding member of the MenEngage Alliance and Young Men 4 Gender Equality. He has worked with several organizations on gender mainstreaming with a specific focus on children, youth and women - UN-Women, UNICEF, Save the Children. Successfully advocating role of boys and men in gender equality from a life-cycle approach
 He has extensive experience in facilitating & managing strategy processes with diverse range of audience ranging from policy makers to development workers to local communities. He has extensive experience in knowledge creation & management. He has written 80+ publications and has given keynote and panel addresses on above area across the world.