Dr. Karu Hangawatte received his LL.B. from the University of Ceylon, Colombo, in 1970 and his Ph.D. (with distinction) in criminal justice in 1984 from the State University of New York at Albany. He is an attorney-at-law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. His areas of interest include law and society, criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, legal method and process, terrorism and political violence, and the administration of criminal justice. He has been an assistant secretary of justice in Sri Lanka. Hangawatte served as a consultant to the United Nations and was commissioned to prepare several papers on crime prevention, victimology, transnational corporate abuses, and economic crime. He has also received several teaching awards at UNLV.

He was a member of the post war Presidential Commission of Inquiry of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka (2010-2011). He served as the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to UNESCO, France, Spain, and Portugal from 2013-2015. During this period, he was also accredited as the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. In 2013, he had the honor of being elected by the Member Nations as the Chair of the 19th Session of the General Assembly of States Parties of World Heritage.