Ms Keetharuth is a long-standing human rights lawyer and defender who has been involved in human rights issues in Africa for over two and a half decades. She is the former Executive Director of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA), a pan-African NGO based in Banjul, The Gambia. Sheila has a long involvement in human rights activism and trains in Monitoring and Documenting Human Rights violations on the continent. In 2011, the Madrid Bar Association awarded her a Medal of Honour for her human rights work on the African continent.

She is currently enrolled as a part-time doctoral candidate at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her particular interests are: business and human rights, extractive industries, women's human rights and litigation to strengthen the African human rights system.

In the course of her one-year mandate, she is tasked with carrying out investigations and report to the UN Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in Eritrea.