Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka

rdf:langString Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka

rdf:langString Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka

rdf:langString Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka

rdf:langString UN's Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka

rdf:langString History, war, international law, human rights

rdf:langString 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 (Indonesian politician Marzuki Darusman). The panel's work revealed "a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka". The panel found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers). The panel concluded that "the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace". The panel found that as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war, most as a result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan military. The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international investigation into the alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by both sides. The Sri Lankan government has rejected the entire report, calling it "fundamentally flawed in many respects", and as being based on "patently biased" and unverified material. A competing report was produced by Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). In 2012, the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) issued a statement welcoming the publication of this report (while acknowledging problems therein) and urging the Sri Lankan government to follow up by working with the UNHRC. The LLRC report has been praised in Sri Lanka, but criticised by opponents of the island's government.