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The signatories include every former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since the Council was established in Geneva in 2006, including Louise Arbour, Navi Pillay and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein
A group of international experts, former UN officials and world leaders have written to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for decisive international action to achieve justice and accountability in Sri Lanka and end cycles of violence in the country that is still grappling with the legacy of a brutal civil war that ended in 2009.
The unprecedented call for action titled “sowing seeds of conflict”, is signed by 20 eminent persons, including former UN officials, former heads of state and international human rights experts, and is another strong signal that Sri Lanka will be front and centre of the agenda of the 46th Session of the UN Human Rights Council when it meets on Monday (22).
“In 2009 the international community failed Sri Lanka. We must not fail again” the no-holds barred letter to the 47-member body that meets at the Palais des Nations in Geneva three times a year. Sri Lanka had made justice institutions unavailable to its own victims, the open letter noted, as it made a case for international action on human rights violations.
The letter said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s Report on Sri Lanka to the 46th Session of the Council made a “compelling case for decisive international action” to ensure justice for mass human rights violations and atrocities in Sri Lanka.
The call to action comes as the Government of Sri Lanka prepares for battle at the February-March session at the UNHRC in Geneva, having rejected High Commissioner Bachelet’s damning report on its human rights trajectory. The Government is expected to contest the Resolution on Sri Lanka that the Council will seek to adopt by the end of the 46th Session. But calls are mounting internationally for a strong resolution, in the face of what High Commissioner Bachelet warned was an impending human rights disaster in the country, as she urged the Council’s member states to consider targeted sanctions, travel bans and asset freezes on Sri Lankan officials accused of war crimes and atrocities.
In their letter, the eminent persons echoed Bachelet’s sentiment that Sri Lanka was at a critical tipping point.
“Whether Sri Lanka continues on its trajectory towards renewed violence or finally breaks with its tragic history and firmly embarks on the path of sustainable development hinges on international action now,” the experts and eminent persons noted in their letter to the Council.
“Given the continued reluctance of the Sri Lankan Government to meaningfully uphold the human rights of all, only decisive, international action to ensure justice and accountability can interrupt Sri Lanka’s periodic cycles of violence,” it added.
The open letter urged the member states of the Human Rights Council to pursue justice for crimes committed in Sri Lanka through universal or extraterritorial jurisdiction. “Existing international avenues for accountability such as the International Criminal Court should be considered, in the face of Sri Lanka’s opposition to ending impunity,” the letter said.
Tellingly, the signatories include every former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since the Council was established in Geneva in 2006, including Louise Arbour, Navi Pillay and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson currently chair of ‘The Elders’, an eminent persons group established by South African freedom fighter and icon Nelson Mandela, and Juan Manuel Santos former president of Colombia and Nobel peace prize winner have joined the open call for action by the Human Rights Council.
Other notable signatories include Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations (2012-2016), Charles Petrie, former United Nations Assistant Secretary General, Head, Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel on United Nation’s Actions in Sri Lanka (2012) and Marzuki Darusman, Secretary General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka (2010-2011).
The strongly worded letter said the appointment of another Commission by the President to go into the findings of all other commissions on human rights violations that have gone before would be “laughable were it not for the seriousness of what is at stake, the long-delayed respect for the rights of victims.”
The letter by the international experts was also scathingly critical of the Presidential Commission on political victimisation. The Commission had not only recommended that the charges against every accused in the emblematic cases highlighted by the UN should be dismissed, and that the accused be given compensation, but that charges should be filed against complainants, investigators, and prosecutors.
In their letter to the Human Rights Council, these experts said that while the previous Government had lacked the ability or the will to achieve sustainable progress on justice and reconciliation, the present Government had explicitly rejected these commitments. The current Government had argued that “the Sri Lankan state committed no crimes in need of acknowledgement or accounting,” the letter noted.
