Facing The Challenge Of Single-Issue international Agenda
By Jehan Perera -January 6, 2014
Jehan Perera
Stephen J. Rapp, Ambassador-at-Large of the Office of Global Criminal Justice of the United States will be in Sri Lanka this week. He will be meeting with political leaders and also with other influential opinion formers to ascertain the situation in the country relevant to his interests and to make known his own views. His visit will be followed shortly thereafter by Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs of the US government, Nisha Desai Biswal. Both these visits are evidence of the international interest in Sri Lanka and its present trajectory of political development. They are also likely to be connected to the forthcoming session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March, where Sri Lanka is likely to figure as an important issue and perhaps even as a test case for collective international action.
Due to the global influence the United States whatever its officials think and say is going to be of utmost importance to all of Sri Lanka, and not just to its government. The views on Sri Lanka of the closest ally of the United States, which is the United Kingdom, are already well known. British Prime Minister David Cameronhas said that his government will use its place within the UN Human Rights Council to press for an international inquiry into the conduct of the last phase of Sri Lanka’s war. When he was in Sri Lanka to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November last year, the British Prime Minister gave the government an alternative of doing its own investigation in a credible manner. But this has not been forthcoming as yet.
The ideal for Sri Lanka in the New Year is to have a government, opposition, civil society and international community that will address the problems faced by people and solve them without making them worse. Among the many urgent problems that need resolution, the issue of accountability is particularly sensitive as it impacts upon the government leadership. Largely in deference to this international pressure, the government has taken some cases of human rights violations before the civil courts and appointed military tribunals to look into other allegations, but these have not yet yielded concrete outcomes. The visiting US officials are likely to get this message from those whom they meet. So it will appear to them that there is a need for international action.
