News
UNHRC Officials on high profile visits here in next 3 months
There will be two high profile visits to the country by United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) officials within the next three months.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-recurrence will visit from Oct.10-23, while the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions will visit from Dec.4-15.
The two visits were confirmed by the Govt. as Sri Lanka gets ready for it’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a process which involves the review of the Human Rights records of all 193 UN Member States every four years or so. This will be Sri Lanka’s third UPR, the first was in May 2008 and the last one in November 2012.
The upcoming visits by the UN officials were preceded by several such visits including one by Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on the “Promotion and Protection of HR and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism.” He was in Sri Lanka from July 10 – 14 this year.
In 2016, Mónica Pinto, the UN Special Rapporteur on the “Independence of Judges and Lawyers” and Juan E. Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on “Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, paid a joint visit to Sri Lanka.
All three of the previous UN officials were strongly critical of the continued use of torture and other Human Rights violations in the country, despite the change in Govt and its commitment to address Human Rights concerns seriously.