The UNHRC's continuing assault on Sri Lanka: A way forward

The UN Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) latest resolution on Sri Lanka raises serious questions about the Council's impartiality and respect for the UN Charter.

- BY DHARSHAN WEERASEKERA

This new measure extends the mandate of the external mechanism established under Resolution 46/1 of March 2021.

At the start of the UNHRC's 60th Session on 08 September, 2025, 43 nations objected to any further country-specific action on Sri Lanka, with several specifically arguing that the external mechanism contravenes Article 2(7) of the UN Charter— which prohibits the UN from interfering in the domestic affairs of states. Yet, barely four weeks later, the Council adopted the resolution, extending the mandate, regardless.

This sequence of events suggests that what drives the UNHRC is not principle or law, but politics. If so, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) must be informed of what has taken place.

The extension of the Sri Lanka Accountability Project (SLAP) discredits both the UNHRC and, by extension, the UN itself, for two reasons.

First, the UNGA created the UNHRC in 2006 to replace the former Human Rights Commission, which had been discredited for bias and politicisation. The UNHRC's founding resolution (UNGA Resolution 60/251, para. 4) explicitly requires that its conduct be guided by the principles of "universality, impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity, constructive international dialogue and cooperation."

Successive Sri Lankan Governments including the present one have categorically rejected the SLAP, most recently on 08 September, 2025. When the concerned State rejects a measure, and the Council, nevertheless, re-endorses it year after year, that is an affront to the very principles on which the UNHRC was founded. The UNGA cannot ignore such a situation.

Second, the resolutions on Sri Lanka since 46/1 have all been brought by the so-called "Core Group on Sri Lanka" led by the United Kingdom in effect, a faction of Council members ganging up on a fellow member. This practice contradicts the ethos of the Council's founding instruments.