Why Aren’t We Talking About Sri Lanka Anymore? “Sri Lanka Solution” Followers Face Justice, but Not Sri Lanka

[Anji Manivannan is the Legal Director of People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), where her work contributes to its international justice and genocide recognition effort]

In 2015, two UN documents instilled cautious hope for Tamil victims of Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, which ended on May 18, 2009. That September, the UN released a comprehensive human rights investigation on Sri Lanka, covering the mass atrocities that characterized its war’s final phase. In October, Sri Lanka co-sponsored UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1, agreeing to fulfill certain commitments, including creating a judicial mechanism involving foreign judges, lawyers, and investigators.

Unfortunately, ten years and four Sri Lankan governments later—all rooted in Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, an ethnoreligious majoritarian ideology that discriminates against Tamils, among others—none have had the political will to ensure the investigation and prosecution of those most responsible for crimes against Tamils. 

Despite facts mirroring newer mass atrocities, particularly Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Sri Lanka rarely features in today’s mainstream discourse on war, genocide, and justice. It has also largely escaped the scrutiny facing the abusive States that followed its roadmap. In the most recent example, notwithstanding Sri Lanka’s historical and ongoing domestic impunity, UN Human Rights Council Resolution 60/1 (2025) does not even mention an internationalized judicial mechanism. Years after the resolutions on accountability began, Tamil victims are no closer to justice than they were at the peak of the violence.

Post-Independence Sri Lanka and the Tamil Struggle

Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism has driven Sri Lanka’s laws, policies, and practices since the island’s independence in 1948, and it still does today. This ideology drove anti-Tamil pogroms (in 1956, 1958, 1977, and 1981) as violent responses to Tamils’ peaceful political expression. Consequently, by the mid-1970s, armed groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), began calling for an armed struggle to create a separate state of Tamil Eelam in the Tamil-dominated northern and eastern parts (North-East) of the island.

The fifth and final pogrom, a week known as “Black July,” is often considered the spark for the LTTE’s armed conflict with the Sri Lankan government. Between 23-30 July 1983, the government transported Sinhalese mobs around the capital in government-owned vehicles to locate Tamil victims. These state-sponsored Sinhalese mobs killed over 3,000 Tamils, raped hundreds of Tamil women, and destroyed 18,000 Tamil homes and 5,000 Tamil shops, resulting in 150,000 homeless Tamils and $300 million in property damage, in violence that “amounted to acts of genocide,” according to the International Commission of Jurists (p. 24).

Over the years, the LTTE gained considerable ground in the North-East: it peaked in the early 2000s, with three-quarters of the region constituting its de facto state of Tamil Eelam. In 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa became president, appointing his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Defense Secretary. Focused on militarily recreating an island-wide unitary state, by September 2008, their government had taken control of all of Tamil Eelam except for the Vanni region, home to the de facto state’s capital.

The “Sri Lanka Solution”: A Roadmap for Mass Atrocities

In September 2008, Sri Lanka launched its final military offensive to eliminate the LTTE and capture its remaining territory in the Vanni. On September 16, the UN’s international staff left Sri Lanka’s final theater of war, dramatically reducing the humanitarian assistance provided to Tamil civilians inside the war zone. That decision, deemed a “systemic failure” of the UN, was a death sentence for the Tamils left behind. About 300,000 Tamil civilians remained in the war zone, where the government-designated “No Fire Zones” shrank from 35.5 km² in January 2009 (smaller than Gaza City) to 14 km² in February to 2 or 3 km² in May (smaller than New York’s Central Park). Over 100,000 Tamil civilians were trapped in the third zone.

These zones were anything but safe: after the government instructed Tamil civilians to go there, the military began systematically shelling them. On several occasions, the army fired hundreds, possibly thousands, of shells daily. Its deliberate shelling—including of hospitals and food distribution lines—killed an average of 1,000 Tamil civilians each day in the final two weeks and severely injured in total another 25,000 to 30,000 Tamils, who lost limbs or acquired other physical disabilities. The exact Tamil death toll remains unknown, with estimates ranging from 40,000 to 169,796. Satellite imagery showed the destruction of permanent structures by explosive shelling. 

The Sri Lankan government complemented its military offensive with a near-siege, restricting food and medical supplies and causing at least thousands of preventable Tamil civilian deaths from starvation, malnutrition, exhaustion, or lack of medical care. Doctors frequently performed amputations (many without anesthetics), their only way to treat wounds. In the final weeks, “amputated limbs were collected in piles” (para. 110) in the only remaining hospital. About 150,000 Tamils were “at immediate risk of starving to death” (p. 58): this was the zone’s entire population at that time. 

Countless Tamil men and women detained by security forces in 2009 were tortured, including with rapes and other forms of sexual violence. This brutal torture continues today.

Hiding behind its military offensive to eliminate the LTTE and the “global war on terror,” Sri Lanka intentionally committed mass atrocities. Tamils on the island and in the diaspora know the crimes against them in 2009—ones eerily similar to Israel’s against Palestinians in Gaza right now—were genocide. My organization, People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), published an expert-vetted legal analysis finding reasonable grounds to believe that Sri Lanka committed genocide.

International Accountability for Other Adopters of the “Sri Lanka Solution” 

Does this fact pattern sound familiar? That’s because in the nearly 17 years since the “Sri Lanka solution”—an abusive “counterterrorism” strategy that conflates civilians with legitimate targets—has been a roadmap for other States, like Syria , Myanmar, and Israel, to commit mass atrocities. It’s seen as a useful tactic because, when done well, only impunity follows.

Syria’s armed conflict began less than two years after Sri Lanka’s ended and provided Bashar al-Assad’s regime an opportunity to test the “Sri Lanka solution” on Syrian civilians and civilian objects. The solution worked for over 13 years, although domestic justice efforts have been developing since Assad’s fall.

Israel and Sri Lanka’s bilateral cooperation facilitated the island state’s historical and recent crimes. Soon after the start of the war, Sri Lanka requested and began receiving counterterrorism and military training from Israel. Also around that time (the 1980s), Israel advised Sri Lanka on building armed Sinhalese settlements in the Tamil-dominated East. Israel sold Sri Lanka bombers, warships, and artillery as well as the drones used to identify and systematically shell Tamil civilians and civilian objects. Now, Sri Lanka’s annihilation of the LTTE—made possible by the indiscriminate killing of Tamils, both civilians and LTTE combatants—has been touted as a surefire way for Israel to eliminate Hamas.

The international community’s inability to reflect on Sri Lanka became key in Myanmar. Buddhist nationalism, a character of the state in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, has violently manifested against Tamils and the Rohingya in similar ways. So did the UN’s shortcomings. As in Sri Lanka, the warning signs of Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya were ignored because of yet another “systemic failure” of the UN. The preference of the UN and member states for quiet diplomacy in Myanmar, which had proven ineffective in Sri Lanka and allowed the massacre of Tamils, further contributed to the Rohingya genocide.

Unlike Sri Lanka, however, these adopters of the “solution” are facing the prospect of international justice, with some efforts underway. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating transboundary crimes committed partly in Myanmar, which, like Sri Lanka, is not an ICC member, and crimes in Palestine, which is a member, so there are no jurisdictional challenges. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing The Gambia v. Myanmar and South Africa v. Israel regarding breaches of the Genocide Convention and Canada and The Netherlands v. Syria regarding breaches of the Convention against Torture. Already, universal jurisdiction has served justice for some Syrian torture victims, albeit those harmed by low- or mid-level perpetrators. 

The UN expert on Palestine (para. 93) and a special committee on Palestine, whose members ironically include the genocidal Sri Lanka, respectively found reasonable grounds that Israel was committing genocide and Israel’s actions to be “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.” The UN commission of inquiry on Palestine concluded on reasonable grounds (para. 7) that Israel was committing genocide. International human rights organizations, generally unwilling to apply the label before a judicial determination, concluded “genocide” or at least “acts of genocide.” 

Shifting Priorities and an Unfounded Faith in Sri Lanka

International politics and relations are, of course, at the core of international actions and omissions. But there are other possible reasons why the originator of the “Sri Lanka solution” hasn’t faced any consequences.

The timing of Sri Lanka’s crimes has contributed to past and current disinterest. The post-9/11 government of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s fight against the LTTE fit nicely within the “global war on terror” narrative, and Sri Lanka found State allies in this regard (para. 44). Furthermore, the final phase didn’t get much international media coverage: Sri Lanka blocked journalists from the war zone, and in those earlier days of cell phone cameras and social media, Sri Lanka’s war (and crimes) couldn’t be livestreamed like Israel’s or even Syria’s. 

Mere days after the war’s end, the UN Secretary-General and most of the Human Rights Council praised Sri Lanka, ignoring urgent accountability and human rights needs. Perhaps hoping to recast Sri Lanka as rights-respecting after that display of poor judgment, States have since seemingly waited for Sri Lanka to hold alleged war criminals accountable despite any concrete proof that it intends to do so. Their international inaction has become increasingly entrenched as the events of 2009 recede into the past and newer mass atrocities and international justice needs take the world’s attention away from Tamil victims.

Then there’s Sri Lankan domestic politics today. After the 2024 election of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake—whose administration has taken some anti-corruption measures but has no plans to prosecute alleged war criminals, instead explicitly vowing not to punish them—States have apparently assumed that domestic justice for mass atrocities will nonetheless happen. This belief is reflected in UN Human Rights Council Resolution 60/1’s complimentary and weak language, even foregrounding economic issues over accountability, in order to secure Sri Lanka’s support. Not that the framing mattered: three Sri Lankan governments have rejected all UN resolutions on accountability since 2020, including 60/1.

International Accountability is the Only Solution for Sri Lanka

No international action, or even retrospections, has occurred regarding Sri Lanka, despite clear parallels with Gaza (among others), 10 years of the UN recommending States use universal jurisdiction, and 2 years of the UN recommending States “[c]onsider using other international legal options.” These options include human rights treaties providing for ICJ proceedings, like the Convention against Torture, and the ICC statute’s article 14, which allows ICC members to make referrals and immediately prompt a preliminary examination.

Instead, States have either lacked the political will or otherwise missed rare opportunities to exercise jurisdiction over Sri Lankan perpetrators. Yes, some have imposed sanctions, but sanctions aren’t enough; in the words of the latest UN report, sanctions “remain limited in scope and cannot in themselves substitute for criminal prosecutions and trials” (para. 55). The UN continues to keep silent on whether there are reasonable grounds to believe genocide occurred, unnecessarily leaving genocide allegations to criminal investigations, if and when they occur. So do international human rights organizations. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka continues to persecute Tamil survivors with torture, unresolved disappearances, land grabs, and militarization. It’s a reminder that Sri Lanka’s regime change may address corruption and economic crimes, but not the mass atrocities that predominately affected Tamils.

It’s great that those who’ve followed Sri Lanka’s roadmap may answer for their crimes in international courts. But it’s hypocritical for the international community to assume, without proof, that the still-abusive mapmaker is better intentioned than its followers and plans to serve domestic justice. 

None of Sri Lanka’s numerous domestic accountability bodies—all non-judicial truth-seeking mechanisms—have established the truth, let alone advanced justice. In reality, the only rights-respecting solution for Tamils requires States to deliver international justice for Sri Lankan perpetrators’ and the state’s crimes: the only form that Tamil victims, survivors, and their communities have faith in. International human rights organizations should maintain pressure and also reflect on Sri Lanka’s crimes against Tamils in 2009 with the aim of properly recasting them as genocidal acts, if not genocide. Only then can all the roadmap’s users be brought to justice, hopefully deterring future followers who’ll see there are no exceptions to ending impunity.

Photo attribution: “A Tamil women cooks in the remain of her old home in the village of Kurivisuttakulam, in Northern Sri Lanka” by the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs and Trade is licensed under CC BY 2.0