Sri Lanka and the UN
SRI LANKA suffered an embarrassing defeat in the UN’s Human Rights Council on March 22nd. A clear majority of the council’s members backed an American-led initiative which called on Sri Lanka’s government to account for the massive toll of civilian fatalities from the end of its long and brutal civil war in 2009.
Mar 23rd 2012, 11:14 by N.C. | GENEVA
SRI LANKA suffered an embarrassing defeat in the UN’s Human Rights Council on March 22nd. A clear majority of the council’s members backed an American-led initiative which called on Sri Lanka’s government to account for the massive toll of civilian fatalities from the end of its long and brutal civil war in 2009.Despite an exhaustive, sometimes aggressive, Sri Lankan campaign lobbying against the initiative, the Geneva-based council’s 47 members voted by, 24 to 15, for a resolution urging the government to implement the recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and to start a credible investigation into allegations of widespread human-rights abuses.
