Tejshree Thapa

Tejshree Thapa (10 November 1966 – 26 March 2019) was a Nepalese human rights lawyer. She was recognized for her role in investigating and documenting human rights violations, including widespread sexual violence and other atrocities committed during the Yugoslav Wars, the Sri Lanka Civil War, and the Nepal Civil War.

Early life and education Thapa was born in 1966 in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her father, Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, held several government positions (including Nepal's foreign minister); her mother, Dr. Rita (Basnet) Thapa, worked as a public health specialist, focusing on maternal health and family planning.

Thapa then worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, leading a unit that investigated and documented abuses that occurred in the Yugoslav wars. She documented sexual violence and other human rights violations that occurred during the civil wars in Sri Lanka and Nepal, as well as in Bangladesh. Her work there helped force the United Nations to acknowledge its failure in protecting civilians during the Sri Lankan Civil War, and prompted the UN to establish Human Rights Up Front, an initiative to promote the importance of early response to human rights violations. Her team comprehensively documented the recruitment of child soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In 2017, Thapa documented the Myanmar military's ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, one of the first human rights workers to do so.

Personal life and death Thapa was married twice and has a daughter, born in 2000, from the second marriage.

In March 2019, Thapa died in New York City from multiple organ failure, following a sudden illness.