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Geneva overshadows Lanka’s meetings in New York
NEW YORK – The Sri Lanka delegation — which spent nearly a week at the United Nations participating in the high-level segment of the annual debate, with over 150 world leaders in attendance — remained more focused on the meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva than on the General Assembly session in New York.
The two meetings, by coincidence, overlapped taking place during the same week. Clearly, the shadow of Geneva was hanging over the delegation in New York, and pursuing it in most of the bilateral meetings. The interaction between New York and Geneva was punctuated by scores of phone calls and emails aimed at revising and tweaking the text of the resolution – primarily on reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka. The resolution was adopted without a vote by the 47-member Council on Thursday.
President Maithripala Sirisena and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera were involved in several bilateral meetings at the UN, where leaders assured their support for the resolution. The vocal supporters in Geneva included the United States, Britain China, South Africa and India — most of whom were involved in bilaterals in New York.
Sri Lanka, which has resisted a full blown international inquiry and managed to settle for a domestic inquiry, with international participation and supervision also found itself benefiting from a dramatic development in Geneva. Relenting to Saudi objections in Geneva, the Western bloc last week withdrew a proposal for an international inquiry into civilian casualties in Yemen — by both the Saudi coalition and the rebels.
The proposal for such an inquiry was supported by the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein who submitted a report to the HRC last month detailing the heavy civilian casualties in Yemen. The draft resolution, sponsored by the Netherlands and backed by the US and Western nations, was dropped, with a possibility of a domestic inquiry—which Sri Lanka has continued to favour right from the outset to resolve its own crisis.
Although the proposal for a hybrid court in Sri Lanka – jointly with foreign participation – was dropped, though not entirely, the Geneva resolution, which had the blessings of President Sirisena, has affirmed “the importance of participation in a Sri Lankan judicial mechanism, including the special counsel’s office, of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers and authorised prosecutors and investigators.”