Action Plan, But No Action

26 September 2012 by Crisis GroupOpening of 21st Session of Human Rights Council, 10 September 2012. Photo: UN oto

With the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) meeting again this month in Geneva, Crisis Group took the opportunity to write to council members with an update on the Sri Lankan government’s continued failure to address its grave human rights problems. Six month’s after the HRC’s important resolution on Sri Lanka, the government still has taken no concrete action to address the host of issues noted by the council. The following briefing, shared with HRC member states, analyses serious weaknesses in the Sri Lankan government’s recent “National Action Plan” to implement the recommendations of its own “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission”. The briefing also puts the “action plan” in the context of Sri Lanka’s continued human rights violations and crisis in the rule of law. It urges members of the council at this session, at the  Universal Periodic Review in early November, and at the HRC session next March to press the government of Sri Lanka for real reforms.

1. Overview

In the six months since the Human Rights Council’s March 2012 resolution on “Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka”, the government of Sri Lanka has taken no meaningful steps to implement the resolution’s core requirements or otherwise address the country’s culture of impunity and deepening crisis of the rule of law. The publication of a“national action plan” to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) does nothing the change this: the government continues to resist launching any independent investigations into alleged war crimes or other serious human rights violations and has done nothing to establish independent institutions able to hold accountable state agencies, the military, or president Rajapaksa and his family.

The past six months have also seen more murders and disappearances of political critics and proposals for new restrictions on political reporting on the internet. Despite a flurry of government claims to have reduced the role of the military in the Tamil-majority north and east, reports from the ground confirm that military control over development, the civil administration and the population at large – analysed in Crisis Group’s two March 2012 reports on the northern province – remains intact. The government still refuses to restart negotiations with Tamil political leaders or hold elections to the long-promised northern provincial council. These policies are increasing frustration among Tamils and weakening support for the moderate, pro-engagement approach of the main Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

Member states of the Human Rights Council need to demand action, not action 

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