Related Research Articles
Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, there was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan Government.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The UNHRC has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of UNHRC is in Geneva, Switzerland.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (U.N.) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disasters. It is the successor to the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO).
The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (UNSTAMIH), also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of the French name, was a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti that was in operation from 2004 to 2017. The mission's military component was led by the Brazilian Army and the force commander was Brazilian. The force was composed of 2,366 military personnel and 2,533 police, supported by international civilian personnel, a local civilian staff and United Nations Volunteers.
The Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (2000) is commonly called the Brahimi Report, named for the chairman of the commission that produced it, Lakhdar Brahimi. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had convened the Panel on March 7, 2000, ahead of the upcoming Millennium Summit, and had tasked it with making a thorough review of United Nations peace and security activities and recommending improvements. The report was published on August 17, 2000. In identical letters dated 21 August 2000 transmitting the report to the presidents of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, Annan called the Panel's recommendations "essential to make the United Nations truly credible as a force for peace."
Mullivaikal Hospital was a makeshift hospital located in the Safe Zone in northern Sri Lanka. An alleged series of shellings and aerial attacks began on 23 April 2009 when the Mullivaikal Hospital was hit by three artillery shells. It continued on 28 and 29 April when the Mullivaikkal Primary Health Center was hit multiple times over a two-day period with six killed and many injured including one medical staffer. On the 29th and the 30th the Mullivaikal Hospital was again hit multiple times with nine more killed and fifteen injured. There were two attacks against the Mullivaikal Hospital on 2 May, one at 9 a.m. and a second at 10.30 a.m. resulting in sixty-eight killed and eighty-seven wounded, including medical staffers. On the morning of 12 May 2009 it was hit by an artillery mortar, killing at least forty-nine patients and injuring more than fifty others. All of these attacks were allegedly by the Sri Lankan Army; however, the Sri Lankan Government denied the allegation stating there is no evidence.
The Sri Lankan Civil war was very costly, killing and/ or disappearing over 100,000+ civilians and 50,000+ fighters from both sides of the conflict. The "Tamil Centre for Human Rights" recorded that from 1983 to 2004, 47,556 Tamil civilians were killed by the war. Another organization called NESOHR published that from the beginning of the war to the 2002 ceasefire, 4000 to 5000 Tamil civilians were killed in large scale massacres, with a total civilian death of around 40,000. Civilian casualties that occurred on 2009 is of major controversy, as there were no organizations to record the events during the final months of the war. The Sri Lankan government claimed that 9,000 people were killed in the final months of the war, but it did not differentiate between LTTE cadres and civilians. The UN, based on credible witness evidence from aid agencies and civilians evacuated from the Safe Zone by sea, estimated that 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 injured between mid-January 2009, when the Safe Zone was first declared, and mid-April 2009. There are no official casualty figures after this period but estimates of the death toll for the final four months of the civil war range from 15,000 to 75,000. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than the UN's estimates and that significant numbers of casualties weren't recorded. A former UN official has claimed that up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final stages of the civil war. Several human rights groups have even claimed that the death toll in the last months of the war could be 70,000. The Sri Lankan government has denied all claims of causing mass casualties against Tamils, arguing that it was "taking care not to harm civilians". Instead, it has blamed the LTTE for the high casualty numbers, stating that they used the civilians as human shields. Both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have been accused by the U.N for war crimes during the last phase of the war.
Charles James Petrie OBE is a British diplomat. A former investment banker and management consultant, he then worked for the United Nations, before going independent.
There were war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the Eelam War IV phase in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers.
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was a commission of inquiry appointed by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2010 after the 26-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka. The commission was mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement made operational on 27 February 2002, the lessons that should be learnt from those events and the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities. After an 18-month inquiry, the commission submitted its report to the President on 15 November 2011. The report was made public on 16 December 2011, after being tabled in the parliament.
The Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was a 2011 report produced by a panel of experts appointed by United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The report is referred to by some as the Darusman Report, after the name of the chairman of the panel.
The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) is a United Nations peacekeeping mission for the recently independent South Sudan, which became independent on 9 July 2011. UNMISS was established on 8 July 2011 by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1996 (2011). UNMISS is since December 2016 headed by Special Representative of the Secretary-General David Shearer who succeeded Ellen Margrethe Løj. As of May 2019, it is composed of 15,000 military personnel, 1,800 police, and 2,800 civilian workers. It is headquartered in the South Sudanese capital of Juba.
Lies Agreed Upon is a documentary produced by Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence in response to a documentary aired by Channel 4, named Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The documentary gives the Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence response to war crimes accusations and rebuts points made by the producers of the Channel 4 documentary, who presented it as "a forensic investigation into the final weeks of the quarter-century-long civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the secessionist rebels, the Tamil Tigers." Lies Agreed Upon was first aired at an official function held at Hilton Hotel, Colombo on 1 August 2011, one and half months after the broadcasting of "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields". Ministry of Defence released another report named Humanitarian Operation – Factual Analysis : July 2006 – May 2009 on the same day.
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished was an investigatory documentary about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War broadcast by the British TV station Channel 4 on 14 March 2012. It was a sequel to the award-winning Sri Lanka's Killing Fields which was broadcast by Channel 4 in June 2011. Made by film maker Callum Macrae, this documentary focused on four specific cases and investigated who was responsible for them. Using amateur video from the conflict zone filmed by civilians and Sri Lankan soldiers, photographs and statements by civilians, soldiers and United Nations workers, the documentary traced ultimate responsibility for the cases to Sri Lanka's political and military leaders. The documentary was made by ITN Productions and presented by Jon Snow, the main anchor on Channel 4 News. The Sri Lankan government has denied all the allegations in the documentary.
Prasad Kariyawasam is a Sri Lankan diplomat and the former Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the top diplomat in Sri Lanka.He was the International Affairs Adviser to Hon.Karu Jayasooriya, Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka.He was the former Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United States. with concurrent accreditation as High Commissioner for Sri Lanka to Trinidad & Tobago and Ambassador (designate) to Mexico. He was also the Permanent Observer of Sri Lanka to the Washington based Organization of American States (OAS).He has also served as Sri Lankan Ambassador to India, Afghanistan and Bhutan.
The White Flag incident is the massacre of surrendering leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and their families by the Sri Lankan Army on 18 May 2009 in Mullivaikal, Mullaitivu, Vanni, Sri Lanka. The LTTE's Political Wing leader, Balasingham Nadesan and Pulidevan agreed to surrender and contacted the United Nations, the governments of Norway, United Kingdom, United States and the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were given assurance by Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and told to surrender at a particular place by Basil Rajapakse. LTTE's request for a third party witness to oversee the surrender was not granted by the Sri Lankan government. The LTTE surrendered to the 58 Division carrying White flags and were reportedly shot dead. Sarath Fonseka, then the Sri Lankan Army Chief stated that they had been shot dead on the orders of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to Shavendra Silva, Commander of the 58 Division. Balachandran Prabhakaran, Nadesan's son, was also killed after surrendering along with his bodyguards. a UN Panel states the LTTE leaders intended to surrender. The Sri Lankan government has denied any accusations of wrongdoing.
Terrorism in Sri Lanka has been a highly destructive phenomenon during the periods of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) and the first and second JVP insurrections. A common definition of terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government for political, religious, or ideological goals. Sri Lanka is a country that has experienced some of the worst known acts of modern terrorism, such as suicide bombings, massacres of civilians and assassination of political and social leaders, that posed a significant threat to the society, economy and development of the country. The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978 is the legislation, that provides the powers to law enforcement officers to deal with issues related to terrorism in Sri Lanka. It was first enacted as a temporary law in 1979 under the presidency of J. R. Jayewardene, and later made permanent in 1982.
Mullivaikkal massacre was the mass killing of tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils in 2009 during the closing stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War ending in May 2009 in a tiny strip of land in Mullivaikkal, Mullaitivu. The Sri Lankan government designated a no fire zone in Mullivaikkal towards the end of the war. It is in this zone where it is believed up to 40,000 entrapped Tamil civilians were killed by the actions of Government Forces.
The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC), is an office of the United Nations Secretariat tasked with serving the United Nations' spokesperson and political advocate on conflict-related sexual violence, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC). The Special Representative holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and chairs the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The mandate of the SRSG-SVC was established by Security Council Resolution 1888, introduced by Hillary Clinton, and the first Special Representative, Margot Wallström, took office in 2010. The current Special Representative is Pramila Patten of Mauritius, who was appointed by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in April 2017. The work of the SRSG-SVC is supported by the United Nations Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict, co-led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), also established under Security Council Resolution 1888.
References
- ↑ "Report of the Secretary-General's Internal Review Panel on United Nations Action in Sri Lanka". United Nations. November 2012. p. 14. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
- ↑ "Following report on activities in Sri Lanka war, Ban determined to strengthen UN responses to crises". United Nations. 14 November 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "UN vows to strengthen response to crises following Sri Lanka report". United Nations. 16 November 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "Report Says U.N. Failed in Sri Lanka". New York Times . 13 November 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "UN Review On Its Conduct In Sri Lanka: Dire Implications". Sunday Leader. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "Petrie Report". TAG. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "UN 'failed Sri Lanka civilians', says internal probe". BBC. 13 November 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "UN report damns failings during Sri Lankan civil war climax". Guardian. 14 November 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "SECRETARY-GENERAL'S INTERNAL REVIEW PANEL. ON UNITED NATIONS ACTION IN SRI LANKA" (PDF). United Nations . Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ↑ "UN: Act on Failings in Sri Lanka". Human Rights Watch. 14 November 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.