Stephen Hopgood argued several years ago that it is activists, not states, who will make a difference in the future, and to a certain extent this has proved to be true in Sri Lanka. Undoubtedly, the primary struggle for human rights has to be waged at home. But there are also times when international support—such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is crucial. For us, 2006-2014 was such a time.
In 2005-2006, I was working at the FORUM-ASIA Secretariat based in Bangkok. As the conflict in Sri Lanka escalated in 2006, I decided to go home and came back to chaos. There were large-scale enforced disappearances, extra-judicial executions, mass displacement, forcible recruitment (including of children), and severe restrictions on traveling and communication. It was also a time where human rights activists, including non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers, humanitarian workers, independent journalists, clergy and opposition politicians with critical views of the government, were killed, disappeared, detained or threatened. Domestic human rights protection mechanisms, such as the Judiciary, National Human Rights Commission and the Ad Hoc Commissions of Inquiries, had become completely ineffective.
It was a very dangerous time to be an activist living and working in Sri Lanka, and it is in this context that international solidarity became a crucial element of our struggle for human rights. The primary focus of our international advocacy was targeting the United Nations (UN), and a secondary strategy of engagement was towards the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth’s failure to intervene severely harmed its credibility, resulting in some heads of states boycotting the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo. And I still believe the level of atrocities we saw in the last phase of the war, particularly in 2009, could have been less if a UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ field presence had been established.
