The latest United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka was so disappointing to the country’s Tamil victims of mass atrocities that a group of mothers of the disappeared burned copies of the document in protest. Although the resolution extends the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Sri Lanka accountability project (OSLap) for another two years, its positive tone appears to indicate uncritical faith in domestic accountability even after 16 years of impunity for the 2009 bloodbath that ended the armed conflict.
The international community’s continued belief that any government of Sri Lanka is genuinely willing to break from systemic impunity ignores, and even fuels, ongoing human rights violations against Tamils, including unresolved enforced disappearances, torture, sexual violence, and reprisals. Human rights and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka—where every administration since the island’s independence has promoted Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism, an ideology that drove the armed conflict and still drives ongoing ethnic conflict—requires accountability. However, accountability in Sri Lanka has fallen off the international community’s radar amid more recent wars. Fortunately, States still have legal options to hold Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan perpetrators accountable before international courts. They should use them.
Ongoing Impunity and Human Rights Violations
More than 16 years have passed since the violent end of Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long armed conflict, when the government of Sri Lanka defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The final five months of the government’s escalating military offensive against the LTTE included indiscriminate shelling, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and systematic torture, and sexual and gender-based violence. The exact Tamil death toll, even rounded to the nearest ten thousand, during this period remains unknown. The U.N. estimated 40,000 Tamil civilian deaths (¶ 137), but according to World Bank household data, 169,796 Tamils are unaccounted for and presumed dead. Most civilian casualties were caused by government shelling, leading to credible allegations of genocide.
Deploying tactics similar to what has been reported in Gaza, the government of Sri Lanka complemented its military offensive with a near-siege, weaponizing and obstructing the delivery of food, medical supplies, and other humanitarian aid. By the final weeks, this siege warfare rendered the war zone’s entire population—approximately 150,000 Tamils, the vast majority civilians—“at immediate risk of starving to death” (p. 58).
Despite U.N. experts finding credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity as early as 2011, the government of Sri Lanka has never prosecuted any official, past or present, for atrocity crimes. Instead, postwar administrations rewarded wartime military commanders with high-ranking military positions or ambassadorships with attached diplomatic immunity. The number of victims of enforced disappearance—which can constitute a form of torture or inhuman treatment for both the disappeared person and the victim’s family—remains staggeringly high. Tens of thousands of Tamils disappeared in the context of the armed conflict. Their families have been protesting every single day since February 2017 to seek information on their disappeared relatives’ fates and justice for their disappearances. Over 350 protesting family members have died while waiting.
Sri Lanka’s entrenched culture of impunity has not only denied accountability, but also paved the way for ongoing human rights violations. In 2018, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights determined that “the use of torture has been, and remains today, endemic and systematic for those arrested and detained on national security grounds under the Prevention of Terrorism Act” (¶ 24). Torture and sexual violence under the draconian counterterrorism law continue, persisting under the current administration of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, elected in September 2024. In August 2025—notwithstanding the new administration’s rhetorical promises to ensure justice for “emblematic cases” (¶ 6), none of which include the infamous international crimes against Tamils of 2009—the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights found that “impunity remains entrenched, and the structural conditions that led to past violations persist” (¶ 30). The High Commissioner recalled how his office and U.N. human rights mechanisms have “repeatedly raised concerns about the routine use of torture and other forms of ill-treatment” in detention settings (¶ 20).
Notably, the High Commissioner also found an ongoing risk of reprisals against Tamils seeking justice and accountability. In the conflict-affected Tamil-majority areas, he observed “continued patterns of surveillance, intimidation and harassment of families of the disappeared, community leaders, civil society actors, especially those working on accountability for enforced disappearances and other conflict-related crimes” (¶ 25). Despite repeatedly pledging to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Dissanayake administration continues to invoke the law to target and repress perceived opponents as well as Tamil and Tamil-speaking Muslim communities. As a recent example of reprisals, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister threatened legal action against those who refer to the state’s mass atrocities against Tamils as “genocide.”
Human Rights Council Resolution 60/1
On Oct. 6, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 60/1 by consensus. Of the resolution’s 14 operative paragraphs, six use “welcomes” as the verb and one “[a]cknowledges with appreciation” the present government’s stated commitments and engagement, including its commitments to “restore the rule of law and to create a society free from discrimination,” repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, adopt “a renewed direction on several long-standing issues,” and establish an independent prosecutorial body.
The resolution at most “[c]alls upon” the government “to ensure prompt, thorough and impartial investigations into, and, if warranted, the prosecution of, all alleged crimes relating to human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law, including long-standing emblematic cases.” Notably, it does not affirm the importance of foreign judges and lawyers, as done so by Resolution 30/1 (2015) (¶ 6), which Sri Lanka co-sponsored, stalled on implementing, and then withdrew from.
Resolution 60/1 only recommends the government of Sri Lanka seek “international support” to conduct exhumations of multiple mass graves—like the one at Chemmani, where over 100 skeletons were unearthed, including of children—and “international technical assistance to strengthen capacities” in investigating and prosecuting the aforementioned emblematic cases (¶¶ 8-9). International technical assistance isn’t a replacement for foreign judges and lawyers and won’t address Sri Lanka’s historical and current lack of political will. And, importantly, the resolution extends the mandate of OSLap, a mechanism established in 2021 to collect, preserve, and analyze evidence of violations in Sri Lanka and support judicial proceedings in and outside the country. Amid the U.N. liquidity and budget crisis, however, it’s unclear how much OSLap can even accomplish in two years.
In effect, the resolution expresses confidence in Dissanayake and his government, contrary to the demands of the most-affected victims (Tamils). This is disturbing given that Dissanayake has repeatedly vowed not to punish perpetrators of war crimes and wartime rights violations. As of May 15, 2025, the administration had no plans to prosecute alleged war criminals, demonstrating its lack of genuine willingness to investigate and prosecute atrocity crimes and serious human rights violations. This is explicitly noted in the High Commissioner’s report: “The unwillingness or inability of the State to prosecute and punish alleged perpetrators is best illustrated by the continued lack of meaningful progress in many emblematic cases” (¶ 38).
New Government, Same Impunity and International Leniency
History has shown that putting faith solely in Sri Lanka’s domestic justice efforts is naïve. Since the 1990s, successive governments of Sri Lanka have appointed at least ten non-judicial truth-seeking mechanisms, including to examine patterns of violence and abuses during the war. None have delivered justice—they’re window dressing to appease the international community, which, unfortunately, has worked.
Starting in 2010, after immense international pressure, President Mahinda Rajapaksa—whose administration was the architect of the mass atrocities perpetrated during the final phase of the war—established the domestic Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The Commission was panned by U.N. experts and international civil society as neither independent nor impartial. Still, Human Rights Council Resolutions 19/2 (2012) and 22/1 (2013) called on the government to implement the LLRC’s recommendations, highlighting eight categories—including “the need to credibly investigate widespread allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances”—even while “[n]oting with concern that the report does not adequately address serious allegations” of international law violations. As of January 2014, the government’s progress was non-existent for addressing extrajudicial killings and extremely poor for enforced disappearances. In response to the government’s failure to genuinely tackle the serious and gross violations perpetrated during the armed conflict, in 2014, the Council established the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL). The investigation issued its final report in 2015, recommending the government establish an internationalized judicial mechanism and review and repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, among others.
In 2015, the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena co-sponsored the landmark Resolution 30/1, pledging to pursue transitional justice, including by establishing an internationalized judicial mechanism and repealing harmful laws like the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as recommended by OISL. But these commitments were never fulfilled. Instead, he continued to invoke the Prevention of Terrorism Act and, like his predecessors and successors, immediately swore to protect “war heroes” from investigations and prosecutions. Sirisena’s successor, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, swiftly withdrew from the stated commitments of Resolution 30/1.
Justice and accountability were further sidelined by the international community after mass protests about Sri Lanka’s economic crisis forced Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. In fact, Resolutions 51/1 (2022) and 60/1’s operative paragraphs reference economic issues before their intended scope of transitional justice.
In September 2024, the next presidential election ushered in Dissanayake, raising the hopes of Sri Lankans concerned about the economy and corruption, but not of Tamils needing justice and accountability as well. To date, while the Dissanayake administration has taken some anti-corruption measures, it has actively avoided justice for wartime crimes and violations.
Now, a decade after Resolution 30/1, despite no tangible progress toward justice and accountability, the Human Rights Council still adopted weak, appreciative language instead of taking a stronger stance against Sri Lanka’s impunity. This conciliatory approach did the Council no favors: the government of Sri Lanka responded by rejecting the resolution, condemning it as “coercive international action.”
A Call to Action for the International Community
The international community cannot just wait and see if, this time, the government of Sri Lanka will finally deliver justice at the national level. Because whenever it has delayed—and effectively denied—justice, they’ve enabled Sri Lanka’s continued militarization and repression, conditions conducive to the recurrence of core international crimes.
In line with the High Commissioner’s recommendations, Member States must use not only universal jurisdiction, but also “[c]onsider using other international legal options to advance accountability in Sri Lanka” (¶ 64(b)-(c)). These include opportunities for establishing state responsibility and individual criminal responsibility.
For establishing state responsibility, States Parties to relevant human rights treaties providing for International Court of Justice (ICJ) proceedings, like the Convention against Torture (CAT), should initiate inter-state litigation against Sri Lanka. States with large Tamil populations and a strong commitment to the prohibition of torture may be well placed in this regard. Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, for instance, are home to tens of thousands of Tamils who arrived as refugees from Sri Lanka; Canada and the Netherlands instituted an ICJ case against Syria for violations of the CAT, and all four States are pursuing a potential ICJ case against Afghanistan for violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Denmark, Finland, and other Nordic countries are also home to thousands of Tamils who arrived as refugees from Sri Lanka and are members of the Group of Friends of the CAT Initiative, a coalition committed to the effective implementation of the treaty.
For holding individual Sri Lankan officials responsible, States Parties to the Rome Statute should make an International Criminal Court (ICC) referral in accordance with article 14 of the Statute, based on transboundary crimes against humanity committed in Sri Lanka (not a party to the Rome Statute) and partly in a State Party. States Parties, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, could make such referrals based on deportation, deprivation of the right to return, and persecution committed in Sri Lanka and partly on their respective territories.
A roadmap to take Sri Lanka to the ICJ over torture claims and the legal argument for the ICC’s jurisdiction over the aforementioned transboundary crimes against humanity already exist. After years of impunity, a robust, multipronged international approach increases the likelihood that the most-affected victims will actually receive justice in their lifetimes. The Tamil community, including the victims and their families, deserve nothing less.
