Sri Lanka at Human Rights Council: “Engage to Disengage”

President Anura Kumara Disanayake

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk   

The interactive dialogue that would follow the High Commissioner’s presentation would be the occasion for members of the council and others, including Sri Lanka, to make their interventions on the subject. By this time, Sri Lanka will have submitted its response on the OHCHR report, expecting that delegations will also reflect on it during Council deliberations. How pointed the response of the Government would be to the concerns, questions and recommendations raised in the OHCHR remains to be seen. Responses submitted in 2021 and 2022 were far off the mark and were utterly verbose

Time is ticking off. And it is ticking off on Sri Lanka’s human rights and accountability front. In Geneva. 

In less than a month from today, the question of promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka will come up for consideration at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. The 60th session of the Council, that is to convene from 8 September to 8 October 2025, would discuss the question under Item 2 of its agenda: Reports of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk is due to present the OHCHR report on Sri Lanka at that session – a report enriched with insights gained during his country visit in June this year on the invitation of the Government. The interactive dialogue on the report is slated for 8 September 2025, and consideration of any action on Sri Lanka, depending on how the core group would want to proceed (they are sure to have made up their mind by now), is likely to be taken up on 7 October 2025. The report has been released by OHCHR and is accessible at https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/sri-lanka-has-opportunity-break-past-t.

Consensus resolution 

In October 2024, the Council adopted a consensus resolution on Sri Lanka – Res. 57/1. With only four paragraphs (two preambular and two operative), the resolution came up with what I would consider a ‘smart mandate’, rolling into one all the different recommendations that the Council has adopted over many years concerning Sri Lanka. The resolution welcomed the report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in its operative para 1, and went on to set out in its operative para 2, its mandate in an all-embracing language. 

To quote from the resolution, the Council “decides to extend the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner and all work requested of it by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 51/1 and requests the Office to present…a comprehensive report on progress in reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka at its 60th session,...”

Although Resolution 57/1 followed the election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake as President, it was the continuation of the understanding that RW dispensation reached with the Sri Lanka core group ahead of the Presidential election, that led to its adoption without a vote. The newly elected Head of State and his Foreign Minister gave the nod to it, thus avoiding the frantic need for lobbying other countries to vote against it – an exercise that would have yielded the same results as in the past, if it had been resorted to. 

Confluence of circumstances 

This happened, however, not by design, but perhaps due to the confluence of circumstances. The interim government had to keep in view the Parliamentary elections, and the gravity of the mandate President Anura Kumara Dissanayake received – a mandate that put premium on the transformation of the culture of governance including the political culture which impacted Sri Lanka’s external relations. They needed to rethink how best to handle multiple external fronts, in particular accountability and justice issues at Geneva. 

This approach of the interim government, however, made practical sense. It gave the President and the new Government time and space to mull over a strategy that could distinguish the different recommendations of the Council and prioritise actions that could be initiated within Sri Lanka to take accountability and justice forward. 

Nonetheless it’s not clear that the Government has actually used that opportunity to strategise in the manner it should have. To its credit, some of the foreign interlocutors who called on the President and the Foreign Minister and, in some cases, on the Prime Minister as well, appear to have a positive view of the three political leaders, often commending their openness, commitment, and empathy. Any disenchantment they seem to have is about the fact that such openness, commitment, and empathy have not percolated to other levels in the relevant Ministries and departments. This is about accountability, reconciliation and human rights, not about other issues affecting governance. 

Legitimacy of resolution and OHCHR report

Nowhere could Sri Lanka’s high level political commitment to look at the recommendations of the Council – whatever terms may have been used to describe them by the new Government – be better seen than in the statement made by the Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath at the 58th session of the Council in March this year. Within the ideological and other constraints that the Government was faced with, the statement appeared overall balanced and nuanced, signalling constructive engagement and dialogue on human rights matters, and avoiding confrontational language or divisive narratives. The statement was welcomed by the human rights community both within Sri Lanka and abroad. Nevertheless it was not long before it was undone at the same session of the Council by the delegation of officials speaking on behalf of Sri Lanka later.

The fact remains, however, that the legitimacy of the resolution that was adopted without a vote is not in contention and that the Government is better placed now than a few years ago, to engage with the Council constructively, committing itself to addressing pending concerns and recommendations with the seriousness they deserve. 

The interactive dialogue that would follow the High Commissioner’s presentation would be the occasion for members of the council and others, including Sri Lanka, to make their interventions on the subject. By this time, Sri Lanka will have submitted its response on the OHCHR report, expecting that delegations will also reflect on it during Council deliberations. How pointed the response of the Government would be to the concerns, questions and recommendations raised in the OHCHR remains to be seen. Responses submitted in 2021 and 2022 were far off the mark and were utterly verbose. 

Going through the OHCHR report that has now been made public, it is clear that one of its main thrusts is to encourage the Government with a shift of emphasis from the core message of its previous reports regarding accountability and impunity in Sri Lanka. It urges the Government to continue and expand transitional justice measures, beyond the Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparation, in a credible and inclusive manner. What terms the Government may want to denote to such measures doesn’t seem to be the concern there, and it is rightly so. The idea appears to be that practical and meaningful actions are urgent, and not how mechanisms and their processes would be termed. 

Do it yourself but take care 

In the same vein, the OHCHR report calls upon the Government to ensure that its public prosecutorial authority enjoy complete independence, efficiency, and competency to be able to incisively evaluate pertinent information and make unhindered, autonomous decisions regarding prosecution. Further, the report signals the importance of a judicial mechanism with an independent special counsel, to address cases involving human rights abuses committed in past decades. 

It appears that the report in some way seeks to reorient the question of establishing accountability into one that is essentially nationally-owned, while maintaining the continued relevance of the Sri Lanka Accountability Project (SLAP) established through Resolution 46/1 in March 2021. 

It is common knowledge that the external evidence-gathering mechanism – SLAP – became a reality especially following the outright repudiation by the Gotabaya government of HRC’s continued consideration of Sri Lanka’s human rights situation with a focus on accountability and justice. Adopted by Resolution 46/1 on 23 March 2021, SLAP was vested with authority, as the Human Rights Watch puts it, “to collect, consolidate, analyse, and preserve evidence of international crimes committed in Sri Lanka for use in future prosecutions.” The mechanism was later extended and reinforced by Resolution 51/1 of 6 October 2022, following the decision of Ranil Wickremesinghe dispensation to continue Gotabaya’s rejectionist stance. 

A few more practical and meaningful measures in the aftermath of Aragalaya, to seriously address human rights and accountability concerns rather than engender further concerns and deepen the prevalent culture of impunity could have made Sri Lanka save face and, combined with a clear policy on non-recurrence, given confidence to the international community that Sri Lanka deserved a break. Gotabaya, RW, their foreign ministers, advisors – even diplomats – lacked imagination, courage and tact. 

“Engage to Disengage”

All these of course offer lessons for Sri Lanka going forward. The Government should learn them fast and take into its own hands the responsibility to address serious concerns in the area of human rights and humanitarian law. It should remain engaged with OHCHR and other UN human rights bodies. It should help change the mindset of officials including defence personnel – a mindset that used to foster a culture of impunity over several decades – to be able to internalise norms of accountability, similar to the manner that the Government is already manifesting on the anti-corruption front. Until then, SLAP would continue to hang over our heads as the Sword of Damocles. It would hang long after the resolutions under which it was established have expired. 

In short, the essential message is “Engage to Disengage”. But that is not ‘cut and run’. It’s a process. 

(The writer is former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in Geneva. He could be contacted via email: 

[email protected].)