Sri Lanka on Wednesday notified the UN about its withdrawal from a UNHRC resolution that called for accountability to human rights abuses committed during the nation’s civil war with the Tamil separatists and pledged to appoint a new committee to review the reports of the previous probes which investigated alleged war crimes.
Sri Lanka co-sponsored the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 2015 resolution along with 11 other countries, including the US and Britain, calling for an investigation into alleged human rights violations during the island nation’s civil war, which ended in 2009 with the killing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Velupillai Prabhakaran by the Lankan army.
The resolution 30/1 on promotion on reconciliation in Sri Lanka was co-sponsored by the Lankan government headed by then President Maithripala Sirisena.
Dinesh Gunawardena, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, in his address to the 43rd session of the UNHRC in Geneva announced the withdrawal while accusing the previous government in erring with co-sponsoring the resolution.
He declared a commitment to achieve sustainable peace “through an inclusive, domestically designed and executed reconciliation and accountability process, including through the appropriate adaptation of existing mechanisms”.