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United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk holds a press conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 26, 2025.
© 2025 Krishan Kariyawasam/NurPhoto via AP Photo
Seventeen years after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, updates the current human rights situation in the country.
The government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office in September 2024, promising justice for past rights violations. Yet, as the high commissioner’s September 3 report concludes, beyond progress in a few important cases, “there has been no recognition or accountability for crimes under international law, gross human rights violations, and serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties” during the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in 2009.
Human Rights Watch raised similar concerns in its September 1 report, which documented limited progress in some emblematic cases, but no movement in cases dealing with enforced disappearances, the killing of aid workers, or the targeting of journalists. The government has failed to follow through on its promise to establish an independent public prosecutor’s office, or undertake legal or structural reforms needed for accountability. The Dissanayake government has also not accepted the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, established by the UN Human Rights Council to collect evidence of serious rights abuses.
The Sri Lankan government still uses the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act to harass and arrest human rights defenders, journalists, and families of victims. They face surveillance and questioning by state intelligence agencies, particularly in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The high commissioner’s report calls on the government to impose a moratorium on using the law pending its repeal, and to release people long detained under it.
The Sri Lankan government needs to urgently institute long-pending legal and structural reforms, repeal repressive laws, undertake comprehensive security sector reform, and take steps toward genuine reconciliation, or it risks further entrenching impunity and the trust deficit among victims.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights should continue to monitor the Sri Lankan government’s progress on accountability for international crimes. UN member states at the Human Rights Council and other countries should press the Dissanayake government to follow through on its commitments to ensure truth and justice. Two decades on, the families of victims are still waiting.