Sri Lankan Lawyer Elected To Internet Regulatory Body

In a move that would enhance Sri Lanka’s image in the internet governance arena, a Sri Lankan based Attorney, Jayantha Fernando, has been unanimously elected as Vice Chairman of the ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC), the first Sri Lankan to be elected for this prestigious position. The other two elected Vice-Chairs are Ms Diagne Maimouna Diop of Senegal and Ms. Heather Dryden of Canada. The election became effective at the recently concluded Nairobi meeting.

Fernando‘s name was proposed by the ICANN-GAC Chair, Ambassador Janis Karklins of Latvia and the nomination received support from 33 countries across all continents, including US, UK, India, Malaysia, Tanzania, Sudan and Brazil.

Previously Jayantha served in the ICANN Nominating Committee (including one term as Vice-Chair), tasked with the selection of board directors and all senior positions within ICANN, becoming the first Sri Lankan to hold a leadership position within the internet regulatory body. Fernando holds a specialised LLM in IT and Communications Law from the University of London, completed on a prestigious British Chevening Scholarship and currently works as Director/ Legal Advisor of ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA).  He was a member of the counterpart steering committee for the design of World Bank funded e-Sri Lanka Development project, which led to the establishment of ICTA in 2003.

He is a visiting lecturer at the Sri Lanka Law College, Law Faculty of the University of Colombo and the Dept of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Moratuwa.