Inside the glass house

NEW YORK - Perhaps one of the political realities of the United Nations is that no member state — with the rare exception of Nepal last week — wants its domestic problems hung out to dry in the chambers of the Security Council.

If a domestic problem gets on the agenda of the Security Council — deemed a political kiss of death — it not only gets "internationalized" but the country concerned may also be subject to visits by UN human rights monitors and could even be hit by sanctions in a worse case scenario.

India has vehemently opposed any Security Council involvement in its long-festering Kashmir issue. Likewise, successive Sri Lankan governments have rightly taken the position that our equally longstanding political crisis is a domestic problem that does not warrant Security Council intervention.

In mid-February, a working group of the Security Council — not the Security Council per se —will consider a new UN report on human rights violations against children in Sri Lanka's armed conflict. The working group will make recommendations for Security Council action.

The UN report has called for targeted sanctions against the LTTE leadership for continously defying the ban on child soldiers thereby violating international law.

The sanctions could include a travel ban, freezing of LTTE assets overseas, arrests and trials in host countries and a ban on LTTE proxy organisations masquerading as international charities.

The demand for sanctions has intensified recently — particularly from international human rights organisations and Sri Lankan expatriate groups.

But if sanctions are to be imposed, Sri Lanka will find itself in a Catch-22 situation involving conditions which conflict with each other. The Working Group of the Security Council does not have the legal authority to impose mandatory and binding sanctions on any rebel groups or member states.

And, according to the UN Charter and Security Council procedures, such mandatory and binding measures can be adopted only by the entire 15-member Security Council through a specific resolution under Chapter VII, which deals with "action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression."

But this requires, a priori, putting the situation of Sri Lanka on the agenda of the Security Council, and not merely on the agenda of the working group, as it is now.

If the government concedes, the dilemma for Sri Lanka would be the danger of putting the entire problem under the scrutiny of the Security Council — not just issues relating to children and armed conflict, but also allegations of human rights violations by the armed forces.

If the issue eventually goes before the Security Council, there may be a call for Child Protection Officers to be assigned to Sri Lanka, and also a call for the establishment of an international Human Rights Monitoring Mission to probe human rights abuses by all parties to the conflict, including the armed forces.

The European Union, which has already imposed a travel ban on the LTTE, may want to appear objective by backing both proposals. The push can come from EU members in the Security Council.

With a new 100-page report on Sri Lanka by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the issue of child soldiers has taken on added significance at the UN.

The New York-based HRW, which was praised for its comprehensive report last year on how the LTTE extorts money from Tamil expatriates for its separatist war in Sri Lanka — has now trained its guns on the government for violating international law by "facilitating child recruitment" and using the Karuna group as "a proxy force" in its conflict with the Tigers.

Asked whether the ongoing crisis in Sri Lanka warrants its inclusion on the agenda of the Security Council, Jo Becker of HRW said last week: "HRW hasn't taken a position on whether Sri Lanka should be included on the Security Council agenda or not."

The government has already tried to pre-empt any international intervention by setting its own national commission of inquiry which, among other things, will also look into charges of human rights violations. The commission of inquiry is to be monitored by a group of international observers giving it international credibility.

Ernest Corea, a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to the US now living in retirement, admits there is a lot of international attention on the issue of child soldiers. He believes a wiser course for the government would be to expand the mandate of the national commission to include investigations into charges of child soldiering both by the LTTE and the Karuna faction.

He said "whatever comes out of the commission will be credibly endorsed by the international observers" consisting of jurists and human rights experts from a number of countries, including Japan, Canada, Australia, India, Britain Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague will hold a public hearing next week to deliver its decision about whether or not the Prosecutor has presented enough evidence against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo of the Democratic Republic of Congo to send the case to trial.

The Dyilo case is relevant to Sri Lanka because he is charged with three war crimes: 1) enlisting children under the age of fifteen; 2) conscripting children under the age of fifteen; and 3) using children under the age of fifteen to participate actively in hostilities.

Although there is a demand that LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran be also brought before the ICC on similar charges, the government of Sri Lanka cannot initiate such a move because it has so far refused to sign and ratify the international treaty that created the ICC. But the Security Council can — as it did in the Dyilo case.

The government's fear apparently is that once you are party to such a treaty, even the Sri Lankan armed forces could be subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC: the same argument used by the US to protect its military and its refusal to endorse the existence of the ICC.