Rani Yan Yan is an Indigenous Peoples’ human rights defender, who advocates for protection of Indigenous Peoples’ (IPs) rights. She is from Marma and Rakhine origin, and hails from the conflict prone Chittagong Hill tracts region. She is the Queen of the Chakma people and is the Advisor of the Chakma Circle, one of the three Indigenous traditional institutions in the CHT. She works in collaboration with local, national and international NGOs, rights organizations and civil society advocating for IPs’ meaningful and effective participation in planning, formulation, reform and implementation of national legislations and policies and, development actions that will have impacts on their lives. She is a firm believer of democratic process which is reflected in her advocacy and lobbying work that focuses on attaining peace through justice, equity and inclusiveness. In the entire period in which she has intervened in voluntary development and justice issues, Rani Yan has sought facilitating access to development and ensuring human rights of disadvantaged groups and individuals.  

  

She has been an outspoken advocate of equal rights for numerically small disadvantaged communities in availing of development opportunities in a non-discriminatory manner. She has also been a vocal critique of racial and gender based discrimination, and has been promoting and implementing progressive reforms in the fields of personal and family laws. She is fearlessly vocal, within the ever shrinking civic space in Bangladesh, of any injustices perpetrated against disadvantaged communities. She has led a number of land and other rights related movements in the CHT in collaboration with civil society and youth organizations. 

Rani Yan plays an exemplary role as the traditional territory’s Advisor. In an unprecedented move, Rani Yan has secured appointment of women as village chiefs in the CHT in order to ensure that women’s rights are upheld and protected in the traditional system by creating leadership space for Indigenous women. Ever since, she has been instrumental in providing capacity enhancement training support to the women village chiefs. 

She regularly conducts fieldtrips to the remotest villages of Indigenous communities, both in the CHT and in other parts of Bangladesh, and promotes revival of culture and Indigenous values; and gender equity. She acts as a bridge between village communities and government and non-governmental development agencies. 

According to her, she has chosen an extremely challenging yet very fulfilling life path. Activism is not a career path, it is her way of life.