Colombo: Sri Lanka is gradually coming under the influence of the West, with the non-Western powers clearing the ground for that. China is dragging its feet on helping Lanka to get out of the debt trap. India has already done its utmost in terms of emergency assistance and is waiting to see what the rest of the international community has up its sleeve on the issue of debt restructuring. That leaves Sri Lanka with no option but to bank on the West and its institutions to help it emerge from the economic rut.
But the West’s demands have wide-ranging domestic political implications. Colombo has to meet not just the IMF’s demands for drastic adjustments in the economic structure, but also the expectations of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the human rights stipulations attached to the European Union’s trade concessions under its GSP + scheme.
The latest (September 6) UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka urged the government to “re-launch a comprehensive and victim-centred strategy on transitional justice and accountability, with a time-bound plan to implement outstanding commitments, including taking steps in relation to the establishment of a credible truth-seeking mechanism and an ad hoc special court.” Victims should be given a role in determining the shape of the mechanisms, it added.
The resolution urged States to cooperate in accountability efforts, “including by using available avenues of extraterritorial and universal jurisdiction, to investigate and prosecute crimes under international law committed in Sri Lanka.” Lanka rejected the resolution on the grounds that these stipulations violated the country’s constitution. But it admitted the need to promote human rights and ethnic reconciliation as per international standards and kept the door open for cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR). Sri Lanka could not totally shun the UNHRC as the latter is dominated by the Western powers on whom Sri Lanka is heavily dependent economically. Most of its trade is with the West.
That brings one to the EU’s GSP+ scheme. GSP+ gives Sri Lanka preferential access to the EU, the single biggest market for the island’s US$ 5 billion garment industry. But the concessions are linked to the ratification of 27 international protocols on labour, environment and human rights. And here is where Lanka has been wanting. The EU has been regularly complaining about the indifferent application of these protocols. In June 2021, the EU parliament had adopted a resolution suggesting that the EU consider withdrawing the GSP+ facility citing “deep concern” over rights violations.
