SRI LANKA: Will international treaties protect human rights in Sri Lanka
written by Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena
Sri Lanka's ratifications of United Nations human rights conventions signal a certain willingness to adhere to the UN treaties and to be guided by international law. But the record of actual compliance with the international treaties tells a different story. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties says individual states must comply in good faith with the treaties they have ratified, and that a state may not invoke the provisions of its internal law to justify failure to uphold international agreements. In other words, individual states are bound to comply with the treaties they have ratified, and it is a well-established principle of international law that states have a duty to bring internal law into conformity with obligations under international law.