UNHRC Resolution – What The Voting And The Pattern Signify

By S. Sivathasan -April 5, 2014

S. Sivathasan

Introduction

To foster peace the UNO was founded. It established a Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in 1946, which drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the period 1947 to 1967 the Commission concentrated on sovereignty in keeping with the spate of decolonization in Asia and Africa. After the mid-sixties when violations increased, emphasis shifted by 1967 to action on violators and a policy of interventionism came about. It implied that investigation and report were assuming weightage in the CHR. As the tasks of the Commission took on a different orientation and a new dimension, the UNCHR was superseded by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2006.

Sri Lanka’s Opportunities

Like most emergent countries which embarked on nation building, Ceylon too had her opportunity. When no problems blocked her way, she created them beginning with partial ethnic cleansing. It took the iniquitous form of Citizenship Laws to repatriate nearly half the Tamils of recent Indian origin. The remaining Tamils of Indian origin were deprived of their franchise and denied representation in Parliament and other civic institutions. The Sinhala Only Act followed to marginalize the Tamils. Since then acts of state terrorism were set afoot for no less than 30 years forcing a third of the Tamils to expatriate themselves in pursuit of life and liberty. Sri Lanka’s creation was an infuriated Diaspora instead of a contented multi-ethnic nation.

The end of the war in 2009 provided an occasion for a Kalinga, a penitent Asoka and a prosperous Singapore. An opportunity arose to build afresh by putting the past behind. But it was not to be and the path of Zimbabwe was chosen as the ‘best practice’. Value was placed on internecine warfare and a programme was drawn up to lay the country to waste. The malpractices caught the attention of UNHRC in 2009 in just three years of its creation.

From 2009 – 14, the Council has methodically gone through the motions providing opportunities for Sri Lanka to change the Human Rights situation in the island for the better. However disdaining to do anything and engaging in denial and defiance were the mode of reaction. The wrath of the UN body was invited by Sri Lanka and as of March this year, a due process stands initiated.

The attention of the UN continues to remain riveted with little letting up and no escape route. A quarrel between two ethnic entities in an island nation has travelled to the League of Nations building, to the glare of the world. Enmity with the world entails root and branch destruction, goes a Tamil saying. Yet the Tamil side eschewed it and paid a heavy price. The contesting side takes the same course to pay a heavier price.Read More