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Let Sri Lanka show the way towards a rights-respecting future: Amnesty
View(s):By Minar Pimple, Senior Director of Global Operations, Amnesty International
It is a difficult time to stand up for human rights. Across the world, from the United States where Donald Trump has tried to impose a bigoted ban on Muslims, to Europe where many politicians spread fear and divide people with toxic rhetoric, to Australia’s torturous offshore detention centres, people who have fled poverty and persecution to seek a safer life are being subject to horrific attacks.
In the conflict zones of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, states and armed opposition groups have been responsible for large scale attacks on civilians, including war crimes. Across many parts of Asia, civic space has been shrinking, as governments find new ways to practise old forms of repression. China continues to persist with a range of human rights violations, showing the wrong kind of direction in a world it hopes to lead.
Against this bleak backdrop, however, countries can cast off their violent past and move towards a more promising, rights-respecting future. For decades, Sri Lanka was notorious as a country where human rights abuses took place on a large scale, with thousands of people killed, tortured and raped. Now, this island nation is making human rights a key part of its governance agenda. Although impunity remains prevalent, with perhaps as many as 100,000 cases of unresolved disappearances, this island nation is trying to make human rights a key part of its governance.
At Amnesty International, the world’s largest human rights organisation, we are delighted to announce that Sri Lanka will be home to our South Asia Regional Office. When Amnesty International won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1977, the committee’s citation noted that our “great and ambitious goal” is to “contribute to the implementation, in every country, of the principles of the Declaration of Human Rights.”
Today, we are closer to that goal. Along with our offices in nearly 70 countries, we have moved our International Secretariat closer to the ground, with regional offices on five continents. Our fight against Donald Trump’s cruel refugee policies has been led by our US section and supported by our Americas Regional Office in Mexico City. We have been resisting the cruel treatment of refugees in Europe from London and Brussels. In the Middle East and North Africa, our offices in Tunis, Beirut and East Jerusalem are working with the activists who took a defiant stand for human dignity six years ago  Our regional offices in Dakar, Nairobi and Johannesburg covering Africa are deeply engaged in issues from calling for protections for people with albinism from killings in Malawi to legally intervening along with partners to oppose closure of Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
From Hong Kong, we cover China and other countries in East Asia, arguing that there does not need to be a trade-off between economic progress and human rights. It is also the message of our national offices in Brazil, Nigeria, India and Indonesia. Human rights do not stand in the way of progress. Indeed, human rights should be inherent to any country’s ambitions to ensure life with dignity to its people.
Our work as promoters of human rights is not to lecture people. It is to, facilitate and empower the people on the ground who have been bravely standing up for justice, despite the odds and the dangers involved. No part of the world has a special claim on human rights. Indeed, what makes human rights universal is their enduring appeal across different countries and contexts and that they were agreed upon by countries from all global regions.
There are many lessons that Sri Lanka can take from other countries which have emerged from the shadows of decades-long conflicts. At the same time, there is much that Sri Lanka has to offer other countries, not least in South Asia, when it comes, for example, to economic, social and cultural rights. At 91.7 percent Sri Lanka has the highest literacy rate for women in the region, and leads the way on gender equality. Nearly all of the country’s children, 98 percent of boys and girls, get a primary education, and its population can expect better health outcomes as well, with average life expectancy at 75 years and the lowest mortality rate in South Asia.
These are not grounds for complacency – more should be done in Sri Lanka to ensure universal realisation of these rights and to ensure greater equality.
As an organisation, Amnesty International will increase our focus on economic, social and cultural rights a while we remain uncompromising on political and civil rights. In the face of government repression, we will continue to stand up for people peacefully exercising their rights. We will never stop campaigning against torture and the death penalty, cruelties that can never be justified under any circumstances. We will remain vigilant when it comes to international justice, holding to account those who violate the laws of war to harm and kill civilians.
At the same time, we want countries around the world to wake up to the millions of people who endure the injustices of going without adequate food, clothing or shelter. People who do not have access to clean water or schools to send their children. For far too long, progress in South Asia has been measured by what can be achieved by the few, often at the cost of the many. Let Sri Lanka show that there can be another way.