Meera Khanna (India) is a social activist, writer, and poet, and the trustee and president of Guild for Service, an NGO focused on empowering marginalized women and children across India. She is a cofounder of Every Woman Treaty and Chair of the South Asian Coalition for the treaty. She serves as the Director of the Secretariat of the regional alliance, South Asian Network for Widows Empowered in Development, and Director of the global alliance, The Last Woman First.

Meera has more than 20 years of experience working in development, including spearheading projects that build the economic, political, and legal capacities of underprivileged women and conflict-affected women and children in Kashmir. She has served as a consultant to the High Level Committee on the Status of Women, Government of India, and has served on two Expert Committees on Widows, one with the Supreme Court of India, the other with the National Commission for Women. Meera has authored four books, two of which are on Kashmir, several papers on women’s rights and widows’ rights, and presented papers at both national and international forums and the UN system. She currently serves on the Civil Society Advisory Group for UN Women for India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan. Meera joined our Working Group in 2016 and served on the Expert Special Committee on Life Stages.