Human Rights, Constitutional Reforms & Devolution In Sri Lanka

By Asoka Bandarage –November 21, 2016

Dr. Asoka Bandarage

Significant efforts have been taken towards reconciliation and integration of the Tamil minority in the Sri Lankan political system since the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. However, the Tamil separatist movement has not been halted. It is pursuing a separate state through political means demanding an Autonomous Tamil Region merging the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka.

Using ample funds and cultivating access to the British, U.S. and other western governments, pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora groups have influenced the United Nations in adopting the 2015 United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution (co-sponsored by the current U.S. backed Sri Lankan government) in Geneva and issuing the 2015 Report of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner. Both documents call for accountability and international investigation of human rights violations in the final stage of the Sri Lankan armed conflict and international monitoring of transitional justice and reconciliation. Clause 16 of the U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution calls on the Sri Lankan government to devolve power on the basis of the 13 Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution and uphold its commitment to political settlement, reconciliation and human rights.

“ Welcomes the commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka to a political settlement by taking the necessary constitutional measures, encourages the Government’s efforts to fulfil its commitments on the devolution of political authority, which is integral to reconciliation and the full enjoyment of human rights by all members of its population; and also encourages the Government to ensure that all Provincial Councils are able to operate effectively, in accordance with the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka”.

However, the legitimacy of the United Nations to continue to intervene and monitor Sri Lanka is questionable given its ‘systematic failure’ to carry out its own duties and uphold humanitarian interests during the final phase of the Sri Lankan armed conflict. This failure has been admitted by the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon himself. The Report on Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel on UN Actions in Sri Lanka’, concludes:

“…events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN to adequately respond to early warnings and to the evolving situation during the final stages of the conflict and its aftermath, to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of civilians and in contradiction with the principles and responsibilities of the UN. The elements of what was a systemic failure can be distilled into … a UN system that lacked an adequate and shared sense of responsibility for human rights violations; …an incoherent internal UN crisis-management structure which failed to conceive and execute a coherent strategy in response to early warnings and subsequent international human rights and humanitarian law violations against civilians. ..”.

U.N. documents refer to human rights violations by ‘both parties’. However, as the LTTE no longer exists as such, calls for accountability are now directed solely at the Sri Lankan government in power during the last stage of the armed conflict. Accountability is not called for from external groups who provided funds for the terrorist LTTE to acquire weapons to kill thousands of civilians, forcibly conscript Tamil children as rebels and suicide bombers, destroy property and Buddhist sacred sites, so on and so forth. An international investigation which focuses merely on one party –the Sri Lankan government- and on just the final phase of the war, absolves all the other parties to the thirty year war -the LTTE, various Tamil militant groups, previous Sri Lankan governments, the JVP, the IPKF, et.al. – of human rights violations.

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