Sri Lanka: Human Rights

Foreign and Commonwealth Office written question – answered at on 12 January 2017.

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Photo of Grant Shapps Grant Shapps Conservative, Welwyn Hatfield

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the co-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka at the 30th Session of the UN Human Rights Council held in October 2015, if he will make representations to the government of Sri Lanka to respect its commitments and allow international prosecutors to investigate allegations of violations of international humanitarian law in that country; and if he will encourage his international counterparts to make similar such representations.

Photo of Alok Sharma Alok Sharma The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

We welcomed the historic co-sponsorship by Sri Lanka of Resolution 30/1 at the UN Human Rights Council on 1 October 2015 committing it to reconciliation, accountability and the protection of human rights. While Sri Lanka has made progress against the commitments made in the resolution, much remains to be done. The High Commissioner for Human Rights will present his final progress report at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in March 2017. Our long standing position is that Sri Lanka should implement the commitments in Resolution 30/01, including its commitment to accountability. Ministers and senior officials have underlined the importance of Sri Lanka delivering in full on its UNHRC commitments in recent discussions with representatives of the Sri Lankan government and with our international partners. We have done so while recognising the scale of the challenge this represents and the importance of allowing time for credible, well thought out transitional justice mechanisms to be developed and implemented.

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