On the ninth anniversary of the end of the war, Sri Lanka has made welcome progress on the issue of disappearances with the criminalisation of enforced disappearances in March 2018, thereby giving partial effect to the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance and operationalising the Office of Missing Persons, Amnesty International said in a statement today.
However, the human rights group said that the Sri Lankan government must support the spirit of these measures by proactively supporting truth-seeking efforts by the families of the disappeared to get answers, almost a decade after the end of the armed conflict. Likewise, Sri Lanka should promptly recognize the competence of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of victims or their relatives.
Amnesty International also called on the government of Sri Lanka to provide information to the families of the disappeared, with detailed lists and information of persons who surrendered to the armed forces in the final phase of the war.
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