Pillay’s office to keep searchlight on Lanka

Tuesday, 27 May 2014 01:24 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Pillay’s office to focus on transitional justice, laws against hate speech, protection of minorities from 2014-2017
Sri Lanka failed to meet High Commissioner’s benchmarks for progress by March 2014: report
Nine Special Rapporteur visits outstanding

By Dharisha Bastians The United Nations office tasked with probing the last seven years of Sri Lanka’s war will continue to engage with the international community and the UN Human Rights Council on issues of impunity, accountability and reconciliation for past and present human rights violations in the island, a new report revealed yesterday.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), currently headed by UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay, released its annual report for the year 2013 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva yesterday. The report said the international community had continued to be attentive to the situation in Sri Lanka, as reflected by resolutions adopted at the UN Human Rights Council in 2012 and 2013. The OHCHR has been mandated by a subsequent resolution led by the United States in March this year, to set up an investigation into alleged major human rights abuses during the war from 2002-2009. The investigation is due to be set up by Pillay’s office over the next two weeks. The OHCHR annual report highlights that High Commissioner Pillay had highlighted pressing concerns regarding the lack of meaningful action on core issues such as accountability, high levels of militarisation in the north and ongoing human rights violations, rising levels of incitement to violence on religious grounds and undermining the independence of the judiciary after her visit to Sri Lanka in August 2013. The High Commissioner had also outlined certain benchmarks to be met by the Government by March 2014 to assess progress achieved in areas identified by the Human Rights Council in the March 2013 resolution. “None of these had been fulfilled at the time of drafting the report,” the OHCHR document maintained. Pillay’s office said the benchmarks had included inviting the working group on disappearances and an independent expert on minorities, a credible investigation process domestically with tangible results including prosecutions and setting a clear timeline for demilitarisation. The report said only one special rapporteur – on human rights and internally displaced persons – had been invited to Sri Lanka in 2013. “The nine outstanding requests for country visits by other mandates holders have not yet been accepted,” the OHCHR report said. Outlining its thematic priorities and contributions to the human rights situation in Sri Lanka from 2014-2017, the OHCHR said it would focus on establishing a transitional justice mechanism in the country to deal with criminal justice and accountability and help to enact legislation against hate speech and combat discrimination of minorities in the country.

The report said it would focus also on “widening the democratic space” in Sri Lanka with a focus on freedom of expression, assembly and association, and incitement to hatred.