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What just happened in Geneva (2.0)?

LYING

Mar 31, 2017


Last week, members of the UN Human Rights Council adopted
another resolution on Sri Lanka Resolution 34/1 renewing the
governments pledges to deliver a meaningful process of justice
and reconciliation. In this post, we briefly explain how and why
the resolution came about, and what it means for Sri Lankas
future.
Why another resolution on Sri Lanka?

Discussion of Sri Lanka at the recent Council session was


prompted by the expiry date on an earlier resolution Resolution
30/1 adopted in October 2015. That text contained a range of
commitments by the government of Sri Lanka designed to
address the legacy of the war and lay the foundations for a
sustainable peace. It included, among others, promises to
undertake national consultations with war affected communities,
set up an Office of Missing Persons, de-militarize the North, put an
end to surveillance and crucially establish a special court, with
significant international involvement, to address serious rights
violations committed during the final stages of the civil war.
The October 2015 resolution also provided for the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, to deliver
a progress update to the Council, which he duly did on 22
March (following the publication of a written report on 3 March).
His appraisal struck a cautionary, and at times scathing, tone.
Though noting several positive developments, the High
Commissioner placed emphasis on the rising frustration among
victims, amid both the slow rate of progress in establishing the
promised institutions for dealing with the past, and the failure by
the government to undertake a range of basic confidence-building
measures, such as releasing military held lands, reforming the
security forces, and resolving long-standing cases of those held
under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. On the question of
accountability, the High Commissioner stressed that he was
particularly troubled by the lack of progress in a number of
emblematic cases, underlining the ongoing need for a judicial
mechanism rendered credible through significant international
involvement.
Against this backdrop, on 6 March a draft resolution text to
succeed Resolution 30/1 was published alike its predecessor, the
product of negotiation between the government of Sri Lanka
(acting as co-sponsor) and a core group of states (led by the UK,
USA, Macedonia and Montenegro). After an intense effort by
states and civil society to revise the text in the weeks that
followed, and the conclusion of an interactive dialogue on Sri
Lanka in the Palais de Nations on 22 March (see video below), the
proposed resolution was adopted by the Council on 23 March
unanimously and without a vote. The full text is available here.
What does the resolution do?
As widely anticipated, Resolution 34/1 re-affirms the government
of Sri Lankas commitment to implement its outstanding
commitments under Resolution 30/1, and keeps these in play for
a further period of monitoring and reporting by the High
Commissioner for Human Rights.
Specifically, it requests the High Commissioner for Human Rights
to present a written update to the Human Rights Council at its
37th session March 2018, followed by a comprehensive report at
its 40th session in March 2019.
Besides encouraging further cooperation and engagement
between the government of Sri Lanka and UN human rights
mechanisms, the text contains no additional substantive
commitments, noting simply the need for further significant
progress on existing ones. The Sri Lanka Campaign will continue
to monitor and review the implementation of those
commitments here.
Is the latest resolution strong enough?
To the extent that it keeps the promises contained within
Resolution 30/1 alive, as demanded in our recent campaign,
Resolution 34/1 represents a minimal victory for progress towards
peace and justice in Sri Lanka. Fears of an attempt by the
government of Sri Lanka to water down its earlier pledges were
not, fortunately, realised, and many will be relieved that, on paper
at least, the benchmarks for assessing Sri Lankas progress have
not shifted.
Nonetheless, the resolution could, and should, have been
much stronger. Despite numerous recommendations by the Sri
Lanka Campaign, and many others, that would have bolstered the
text, regrettably few, if any, of these were heeded by the drafters
of the resolution. These included a number of relatively
uncontroversial yet important demands, such as the
acknowledgment of a recent official report based on Consultations
with war affected communities, and a commitment by the
government to develop a clear public timetable for delivering on
its promises.
What next?
Despite some reassuringly strong statements from a wide cross
section of member states at the Council during the interactive
dialogue many of which did echo these recommendations, as
well as the findings of the High Commissioner the failure of key
states to push the envelope on the resolution ought to prompt
some concern about the overall direction for Sri Lanka in the
months and years ahead. As we argued in an earlier post, the
international communitys political resolve to push the
government of Sri Lanka to ensure it lives up to its promises is
now more important than ever. Agreeing a set of commitments is
one thing; undertaking the heavy-lifting to ensure they are taken
forwards and fulfilled is quite another.
The issue of accountability is a case in point. Immediately
following his address to the Human Rights Council during the
interactive dialogue, in which he outlined his governments firm
commitment to the measures in 30/1, Deputy Foreign Minister
Harsha de Silva took to Twitter to deny incorrectly that these
included the creation of a special court with significant
international involvement. Latterly, President Sirisena
was quoted in a news article stating that he would not allow
members of the army to become criminal suspects, and to that
end, that his government was utilizing that goodwill and
friendship for the protection of the honor and respect of our war
heroes.
That the most senior officials in the Sri Lankan government feel
able to immediately contradict their pledges to ending impunity
and worse still, to explain that they feel able to do so as direct
result of the space afforded by the international community is a
damning indictment of the prevailing approach to Sri Lanka, one
that has seen key states decreasingly willing to speak up for the
interests of war survivors in the face of government inaction and
backtracking.
Statements such as these, and the overall dismal
performance by the government of Sri Lanka in fulfilling
its pledges over the past 18 months, require members of
the international community to urgently re-think their
strategy with respect to Sri Lanka. A historic opportunity
to address the root causes of cyclical violence is in the
process of being missed. If the international community is
content to see that happen, then we can look forward to
seeing Sri Lanka at the Human Rights Council again in 2
years time, with the same unfulfilled promises, with new
violations having happened in the meantime, and with
trust between communities further damaged perhaps
beyond repair. This is a path Sri Lanka has walked before,
and which eventually and inevitably leads back to mass
atrocities.
If the international community does not, once again, want to find
itself complicit in allowing this to happen then it must think much
more robustly and creatively about applying pressure to ensure
that the Sri Lankan Government honours in full the commitments
it has made at the Human Rights Council. Aid, trade and
determined political engagement provide some of the levers
necessary to effect this change. Promises made on paper, alone,
will not.
Posted by Thavam

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