WGEID on a ten-day mission to Sri Lanka

A UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) is on a ten-day mission to Sri Lanka on a government invitation to facilitate reconciliation and post-conflict trouble shooting in Sri Lanka, the

learns. The group will be leaving the country next Wednesday.

The WGEID will focus its attention on working with State officials, State agencies and other stakeholders on matters pertaining to the remaining cases of missing persons.

This matter had also been discussed widely in international forums, at the UNHRC sessions in Geneva and by the Sri Lankan diaspora. They have requested the Sri Lankan Government to address the issue speedily through a domestic mechanism assisted by foreign experts.

WGEID is scheduled to meet Missing Persons’ Commission Chairman retired Judge Maxwell Paranagama on Tuesday.

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said WGEID has been mandated to discharge its functions in a humanitarian spirit by taking a non-accusatory and a non-confrontational approach.

The invitation to WGIED had been extended by the then Mahinda Rajapaksa government in January 2013.

“The members of the working group will observe the practices carried out to prevent, investigate, punish and eradicate enforced disappearances as well as the programmes and measures adopted to implement the ‘1992 Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances’ and to guarantee their rights. They will also discuss initiatives in the areas of truth, justice, reparation and the recommendations for non-recurrence for the future,” the spokesman said. “Especially in the light of present initiatives and commitment to promote and protect human rights and assist families of the missing to the largest extent possible.”

The spokesperson said the Working Group had conveyed to the government nearly 12,341 cases of enforced or involuntary disappearances while the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Ministry of Defence, the Attorney General’s Department and other relevant agencies have provided clarification on 6,590 cases with the work underway to clarify the remaining cases, The WGEID was established in 1980.