UN Urges Sri Lanka War Crimes Court

By The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice

17 September, 2015
Srilankacampaign.org

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released its long awaited report into human rights violations in Sri Lanka 2002-2011.It calls for a war crimes court.

You can read it, watch the press conference, and read our reaction here.

This marks the end of a long struggle by victims and survivors – many thousands of whom gave testimony to the investigation at great personal risk – for international recognition of the abuses that they have endured.

Yet it is also the beginning of another, even more important chapter – one that will begin to be written in the next few weeks when members of the Human Rights Council sit down to discuss the report and propose the concrete action that must follow.

We are pleased to report that the robust findings and recommendations of the report offer a clear and credible roadmap for those next steps, both in terms of satisfying survivor demands for justice and for addressing the root causes of patterns of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

The resonance between many of the report’s recommendations and the survivor demands laid out in our recent report [1] is a powerful indictment of its strength. But, given their divergence from the Government of Sri Lanka’s current position, as well as recent comments by the US [2], they also point to the very serious challenge ahead.

As we wrote last month, what is now required is a strategy for closing that gap [3]. Given the Sri Lanka government’s lacklustre response to today’s report, it is now incumbent on the international community to take the lead on such a strategy. They must either push the Government of Sri Lanka to go further, or go further themselves.

The first step will be to ensure that the imminent resolution on Sri Lanka is as strong as it can be. That is something that will take serious courage, political capital, and willingness for change.

To throw your weight behind that call – and to urge the international community not to ignore the demands of survivors – please sign our petition today.

Kind regards,

The Sri Lanka Campaign

1 - https://www.srilankacampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/How-Can-We-Have-Peace-Sri-Lanka-Campaign-March-2015-3-1.pdf
2 - http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/26/us-backs-internal-sri-lanka-war-crimes-investigation.html
3 - https://www.srilankacampaign.org/what-next-part-1-pragmatism-or-principle-a-false-choice/