Sri Lanka continues to be before the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with a new resolution adopted in October 2025 extending the UNHRC’s investigation of civil war-era war crimes and human rights violations through the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Sri Lanka Accountability Project to 2027. This followed the OHCHR’s recent release of A/HRC/60/21, a new report evaluating the state of human rights in Sri Lanka under the new administration and providing a set of policy recommendations. The resolution also asks the OHCHR to provide a written update at the 63rd session, set to take place this fall in September-October 2026, and a full length report at the 66th session, set to take place in September-October 2027.  

The calls for an updated assessment come in the wake of the new government’s election, and their promises to strengthen the protection of human rights in Sri Lanka and take steps towards post war reconciliation. Despite these promises, OHCHR notes that the current government  has a long way to go before substantial progress is made. 

The roots of the UNs involvement in Sri Lanka stretch back to the devastating 27 year long civil war. Shortly after the war ended in 2009, the then UN Secretary General  appointed a three member Panel of Experts on Accountability to investigate the veracity of allegations that the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE committed human rights violations during the last stage of the war. The resulting 2011 report (colloquially referred to as the Darusman Report) found substantial evidence indicating that both parties had engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Sri Lankan Government strongly denied these claims, arguing that the report was biased and opposing international investigations into Sri Lankan affairs in general. As an alternative, the government supported a domestic investigation committee of their own creation, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The LLRC’s 2011 report failed to properly investigate or acknowledge the full extent of human rights violations that occurred during the civil war, working as a mechanism to fulfill international calls for an investigation without challenging governmental claims that those in the Sri Lankan government prosecuting the war were concerned about protecting civilian lives. 

Considering the failures with an independent investigation, the UNHRC adopted  Resolution 19/2 in 2012, which, among other objectives, urged the government to act upon the UN’s proposals from the 2011 report and take steps towards accountability and reconciliation. This was followed by Resolution 22/1 in 2013 and  Resolution 25/1 in 2014, both of which urged the Sri Lankan government to independently investigate the allegations of war crimes committed during the war and start a reconciliation process. The Sri Lankan government opposed these attempts and rejected the resolutions. 

This pattern changed in 2015, after the election of President Maithripala Sirisena in January. That September, the OHCHR issued a report describing the human rights violations that occurred during the war in greater detail and proposing a set of recommendations designed to address the human rights violations committed during the war and hasten accountability and reconciliation. Many of the problems addressed in the suggested reforms persist to this day, including land appropriation, providing closure on and reparations for enforced disappearances, and establishing credible mechanisms for transitional justice. The report was published in tandem with Resolution 30/1. Breaking from past practices, the Sri Lankan government cosponsored the resolution,  expressing support for its contents and committing to advancing the recommendations outlined in the report. 

The Sri Lankan Government’s support for the UNHRC Resolution continued in the next few years with resolutions 34/1 in 2017 and 40/1 in 2019. Both of these resolutions urge the government to finish implementing the reforms that the Sri Lankan Government committed to upon cosponsoring Resolution 30/1. However, after the election of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in November 2019, the Government  withdrew its support from 40/1 on the grounds of wishing to implement a domestic mechanism for reconciliation instead. In the years since, the UNHRC has adopted four more resolutions: Resolution 46/1 in 2021, Resolution 51/1 in 2022,  Resolution 57/1 in 2024, and the most recent Resolution 60/21 in 2025. All of them have expressed concern at the government’s continued violation of human rights, with Resolution 46/1 establishing the  OHCHR Sri Lanka Accountability Project in order to increase the UNHRC’s capability to monitor human rights abuses within the country. All four of these resolutions have been rejected by the Sri Lankan government.

A decade after the Sri Lankan government originally committed to reforms by cosponsoring  Resolution 30/1, the UNHRC’s ongoing efforts have had some tangible impact.  Land reparation has begun to occur, and the new administration has promised to reopen multiple infamous unsolved cases centering murdered or missing people. The biggest changes to come out of the Sri Lankan government’s initial attempts to adhere to Resolution 30/1 were the creation of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) and the Office for Reparations (OR), which were established to manage missing persons cases and to repair the damages experienced by victims of Sri Lanka’s near three decade long civil war. Additionally important was the Sri Lankan government’s ratification of the United Nations’ International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2016, with domestic law subsequently enacted, which created a framework allowing the prosecution of Enforced Disappearances. 

However, it is important to note that the 2025 OHCHR report criticizes the OMP and OR, claiming that the OMP has lost credibility among the population it is designed to serve due to the repeated appointments of biased individuals to serve at the OMP. In addition, the OHCHR points out the OMP’s enormous backlog of cases that it still has to investigate, and its practice of referring individuals to the OR for reparations payments without providing any additional details about the missing family member. The October 2025 UN’s Committee on Enforced Disappearances’ concluding report echoed the complaints about the OMP’s referring practices, as well as noting issues with OMP and OR’s coordination with the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation and lack of clarity around the OMP’s issuing of absence certificates to the relatives of missing people. 

It remains to be seen how the government responds to and takes forward its promises on human rights and transitional justice and whether concrete steps will be taken in 2026 and beyond. As the OHCHR’s recent release of a report on conflict related sexual violence in Sri Lanka emphasizes, the civil war might have ended but victims still are far  from receiving true justice. 

Last updated – March 2026