Robert O. Blake has once said, “International mechanisms can become appropriate in cases where states are either unable or unwilling to meet their obligations.” After Geneva March 2013, US officials have reiterated…
The 22nd regular session of the Human Rights Council was held from 25 February to 22 March 2013 at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. As did with conversations on Twitter over…
Nimalka, now we’ve seen that the council voted for the resolution on Sri Lanka. What is your initial impression? It’s a serious voting pattern. Because if you look at the resolution, the…
An archive of material around the Resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’ passed at the UN Human Rights Council today. Final text below, and available as PDF here, and…
Download the report in full here, or view in inline here. ### Introduction Nearly four years since the end of the country’s civil war, Sri Lanka remains a divided, post-war society, as…
[Editors note: See our earlier report, .] March 5th, 2013, Vavuniya On March 5th, 2013, at about 8.30pm, the Police blocked about 600 persons, comprising families of the disappeared and civil society activists…
Image courtesy JDS Sri Lanka Campaign has just released a very good compilation of rebuttals to points made by Min Mahinda Samarasinghe’s address to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, which can…
The administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa won the ethnic war, but Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict is more alive than ever. There is a lot of talk about how the situation in the…
Image from Niti Central “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch…
Sunila, how do you look at Sri Lanka today? There are different interpretations ranging from a constitutional dictatorship to clan- run ‘deep state’? And you have decades of human rights activism behind…
When Etisalat dreams of a Sri Lanka where everyone is connected, it’s clearly thinking only of the Sinhalese. Why else would the company’s website feature, so prominently, a Lion to depict ‘everyone’…
Image courtesy Centre for Human Rights Malcolm Fraser Once again Sri Lanka is in the thralls of yet another ethnic conundrum. It would seem that Sri Lankans like to live dangerously, in…
The BBC’s Charles Haviland interviewed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs Minister Alistair Burt on 1st February 2013, during an official visit to Sri Lanka which saw the Minister…
Photo credit FCO [Editors note: Also listen to Interview with Alistair Burt on Sri Lanka] On 5th February 2013, UK Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt hosted a live interview session via Twitter….
Image courtesy Centre for Human Rights The dominating narrative is dichotomous: at one end of the spectrum is the view that reconciliation has been achieved with the conclusion of the armed struggle and…
