by Amnesty International, London, July 21, 2025
Index Number: ASA 37/0125/2025
Amnesty Submission to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances July 2025
INTRODUCTION
Sixteen years since the war ended, thousands of victims of enforced disappearances continue to suffer as
they await truth, justice, and reparation. During its nearly three-decade long internal armed conflict between
1983-2009, Sri Lankan government forces and associated armed groups have violated international human
rights law (IHRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL) with impunity, including by engaging in
extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and tortured Tamils suspected of links with the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE also committed crimes under international law and human rights
violations including, but not limited to, launching indiscriminate suicide attacks on civilian targets, like busses
and railway stations, assassinated politicians and critics, and forcibly recruited children as fighters.
According to cases still outstanding before the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
(WGEID), Sri Lanka has the second largest number of unresolved enforced disappearance cases in the world,
recorded at 6,264 by the end of 20241 — second only to Iraq. Amnesty International estimates that, as of
2017, there have been at least 60,000, and as many as 100,000 cases of enforced disappearance in Sri
Lanka since the 1980s.2 Those disappeared include those alleged to have been connected in any way to the
LTTE (who disappeared following arbitrary arrests and detentions under the Prevention of Terrorism Act
(PTA) or were taken away in unmarked vehicles by officers dressed in civil clothes – known locally as ‘white
van abductions’), government critics, LTTE cadres including those who surrendered at the end of the armed
conflict, as well as those forcibly conscripted by the LTTE, including child soldiers. Members of the
government forces, paramilitary groups, other state agencies as well as the LTTE are among those suspected
of criminal responsibility for carrying out enforced disappearances.
In 2010, the UN Secretary-General appointed a Panel of Experts to advise on accountability mechanisms for
alleged violations of IHRL and IHL during the final stages of the internal armed conflict.3 The Panel found
credible allegations of serious violations by both government forces and the LTTE,4 challenging the
government’s “zero civilian casualties” claim.5
In response to mounting international pressure, Sri Lanka established the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation
Commission (LLRC) in 2010 to examine the breakdown of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement and events up to
May 2009.6 The LLRC made key recommendations, particularly on enforced disappearances, and criticized
the government’s failure to implement past commission findings.7 However, the 2015 OHCHR investigation
(OISL) noted the LLRC’s limited impact as many recommendations were not implemented, fuelling the
public’s scepticism toward domestic commissions.8
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has since passed nine resolutions on Sri Lanka from 2012, 9 largely
in response to inadequate domestic accountability efforts. Resolution 25/1 (2014) mandated the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to investigate violations during the LLRC’s timeframe.10
The resulting 2015 OISL report found reasonable grounds to believe that all parties committed serious
violations, some potentially amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.11
In the meantime, another domestic mechanism was created. The Paranagama Commission, established in
2013 to investigate enforced disappearances,12 later received an expanded mandate to examine wartime
violations of international law.13 While it did not publish its final report on disappearances, its report under
the second mandate acknowledged credible allegations of war crimes by individuals belonging to state forces
for several alleged violations.14 These included the disappearance of surrendering combatants and civilians
at the end of the war.15
In 2015, a new government took a more constructive approach to transitional justice. By co-sponsorship of
UNHRC Resolution 30/1 in 2015,16 Sri Lanka committed to establishing four transitional justice mechanisms:
including the Office on Missing Persons (OMP), a Truth Commission, an Office for Reparations, and a judicial
mechanism with international participation. Only the OMP and the Office for Reparations were established
before the government changed in 2019. The OMP, created in 2016, was mandated, inter alia, to trace
missing persons and clarify the circumstances of their disappearance.17 However, it has been widely
criticized – particularly by victim communities in the North and East – for its ineffectiveness and failure to
build trust.
Amnesty International has expressed strong reservations about the government’s 2024 proposal to establish
a Truth, Unity and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In a public statement,18 Amnesty highlighted the poor
track record of past truth commissions in Sri Lanka, whose recommendations were largely ignored. Amnesty
also warned that without meaningful criminal accountability –hindered by a politicized Attorney General’s
(AG’s) department and the absence of domestic laws incorporating international crimes – a new truth
commission would be ineffective and meaningless to victims. The organization further noted that ongoing
land seizures in Tamil and Muslim areas and the heavy military presence in war-affected regions is not
conductive to trust building.
Meanwhile, the UNHRC’s 2021 Resolution 46/1 led to the creation of the OHCHR Sri Lanka Accountability
Project,19 which has been collecting and preserving evidence for future accountability processes. Despite
this, the current government has rejected the mechanism,20 continuing a pattern of resistance to international
oversight.
We include an overview of the various domestic initiatives in an annexure at the end of this submission…
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
Amnesty International wrote to the Sri Lankan government earlier this year listing out recommendations for
reform.121 The organization reiterates some of this below:
THE DOMESTIC LAW
• Explicitly recognize in domestic law that enforced disappearances committed in the context of a
widespread and systematic attack constitutes a crime against humanity and must be prosecuted as
such;
• Recognize the retroactive applicability of the crime of enforced disappearances, as provided by
Article 15(2) of ICCPR;
• Recognise the continuous nature of the crime of enforced disappearances and that the statute of
limitation “commences from the moment when the offence of enforced disappearance ceases,
taking into account its continuous nature” – in line with Article 8 of the Convention;
• Amend the definition of the crime of enforced disappearance to make clear that the deprivation of
liberty and the refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or to give information about the fate
and whereabouts of the person need not be committed by the same person;
• Recognize ordering as a discrete mode of responsibility for the crime of enforced disappearance;
• Recognize aggravating circumstances for the commission of the enforced disappearance such as
the death of the disappeared person or the commission of an enforced disappearance with respect
to pregnant women, minors, persons with disabilities or other particularly vulnerable persons;
• Recognize the competence of the Committee to receive and consider communications from
individuals from the state party under Article 31 of the Convention.
ACCOUNTABILITY
• Ensure the efficiency of the writ of habeas corpus by ensuring authorities cooperate with the process
expeditiously;
• Promptly and impartially investigate new allegations of enforced disappearances and, where there
is sufficient and admissible evidence of criminal wrongdoing, bring charges against those suspected
of criminal responsibility;
• Define a reasonable time to transport a detainee to a lawful detention centre from the point of arrest;
• Ensure there are sufficient funds allocated for excavation and identification processes linked to the
discovery of mass graves, and ensure the process of exhumation and the custody of remains is
secured and transparent, with sufficient updates periodically provided to family members of
suspected victims;
• Provide a timeline for the government’s plans to set up a new Public Prosecutor’s Office;
• Prosecutions in emblematic cases should be expedited, and proactive steps need to be taken to
reduce delays. In this regard, it would be prudent to request the AG to appoint a dedicated
prosecutorial team to exclusively handle emblematic cases. Similarly, there needs to be dedicated
judges appointed to the bench of the special high court trial-at-bar, so that hearings can take
expeditiously as specified in the Judicature Act. It is imperative that delays in these cases are not on
account of not having a full bench to hear cases;
• Ensure that the continuing harassment faced by victims’ families, lawyers, journalists and activists
while pursuing justice stops immediately. In this respect, the Ministry of Justice should coordinate
with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Public Security with the view of issuing clear
instructions to relevant agencies such as the CID, the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID), Counter
terrorist Investigation Division (CTID) and acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) to cease and
investigate all threats against lawyers, activists, victims seeking justice for human rights violations;
• Desist from penalizing families of the forcibly disappeared who are exercising their right to peaceful
protest and memorialize their loved ones. Law enforcement authorities must be sent strict
instructions to avoid approaching the judiciary seeking pre-emptive court orders restricting public
gatherings, protests and memorialisation initiatives, as a matter of practice;
• Amend the Protection of Victims of Crime and Witnesses Act in order to make appointments made
to its Authority more independent by ensuring the appointed members are made on the
recommendation of the Constitutional Council (instead of the President), and guarantee the
Division’s independence from the Police;
• Work constructively with the OHCHR, including the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, to ensure
justice for victims of the internal armed conflict. Provide them access to Sri Lanka to pursue further
investigations;
• Accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as it would help bring justice and
lead to closure over crimes committed during the internal armed conflict, as Sri Lanka is yet to adopt
international crimes into its domestic legal framework.
THE ANTI-TERRORISM LAW
• Ensure that any new counter-terrorism law is in line with international law and contemporary best
practices on protecting human rights while countering terrorism;
• Issue an immediate moratorium on the PTA, stop abusing the law’s vast powers to detain individuals,
and publicize a timeline for the PTA’s repeal.
THE OMP
• Urgently and genuinely take account of the demands of families of the disappeared demanding
answers for decades. The state authorities must prioritize, respect and facilitate the victims’ rights to
truth, justice and reparations without seeking to close the cases on their missing loved ones without
clarifying their fate, independently verifying whereabouts, the circumstances of the disappearance,
and finding remains to be returned to families in cases where they are not found to be alive;
• Hold the OMP and its leadership to account for its lack of progress on the mandate, make systemic
changes with regards to its operations, and ensure that recommendations on appointments made
to the Office are of individuals that are capable, committed and independent;
• Ensure that information made available by the OMP, for example in its draft Annual report, is specific
and detailed. Much more outreach work needs to be embarked upon to bridge the trust and
knowledge gap that exists between the institution and those affected;
• Table amendments to the OMP Act and the Constitution in order to make the OMP a Constitutional
body, on par with other Independent Commissions;
• Table an amendment to the OMP Act to reverse the amendment that was brought in 2017 removing
its ability to enter into agreements with other organizations and individuals. The OMP should be able
to receive the full support needed to carry out its mandate;
• Encourage the OMP to seek and accept foreign technical expertise to assist ongoing mass graves
investigations on an urgent basis, while Sri Lanka strengthens its national forensic capacity;
• Ensure that the OMP makes demonstrable progress on carrying out its tracing mandate by obtaining
and publishing the list of those who surrendered to the armed forces at the end of the war and
provide an update on inquiries conducted thus far with the armed forces and other perpetrators who
have allegedly carried out abductions.