New UN Report Highlights Failure to Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
Photo courtesy of HRW
A new report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka found that sexual violence targeting Tamils, both men and women, during and after the armed conflict “was not merely a collection of isolated incidents but part of a deliberate, widespread, and systemic pattern of violations.”
“These acts, some of which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, were employed as a strategic tool to extract information, assert dominance, intimidate individuals and communities, and instill a pervasive climate of fear and humiliation.Such violations were institutionally enabled, and disproportionately targeted conflict-affected communities,” the report said.
It called on the government to take immediate and concrete steps to publicly acknowledge past sexual violence committed by state forces and others and to issue a formal apology. It should also implement survivor-centred reforms across the security sector, judiciary and the legal framework, establish an independent prosecution office and ensure access to psychological and social support, the report said, concluding that the government must urgently follow through on its commitment to advance domestic accountability and undertake transformative reforms, with specific attention to this issue.
Many UN reports have documented the widespread and systemic nature of sexual violence in the conflict and the consistent failure of the state to ensure accountability. However the new report, based on a decade of monitoring and reporting by the UN Human Rights Office and extensive consultations with survivors, local experts on gender-based violence, civil society and others, highlighted what this impunity means in practice for survivors: the trauma they continue to endure, the silence imposed by stigma and fear and the social cost of denial. The report connected systematic failures to human suffering and outlined recommendations to advance accountability efforts.
It noted that sexual violence was not incidental but perceived by survivors as systemic, institutionally enabled and disproportionately inflicted on conflict-affected communities, occurring within a broader climate of persistent impunity.
Despite it being a longstanding matter of record, successive governments have failed to adequately investigate or prosecute cases of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV), often minimizing or denying the extent of the violations. While international actors have expressed concern, meaningful steps toward facilitating credible accountability and access to justice for survivors have remained limited.
“The current Government has pledged a renewed focus on domestic accountability and justice reform, including commitments to address some emblematic cases and restore the rule of law. However, despite these commitments, entrenched impunity for serious violations, including CRSV, persists and tangible progress remains to be seen. Consequently, survivors continue to be largely denied justice, and the systemic and institutional conditions that enabled such violations remain largely unaddressed. The continued failure to address and ensure accountability for historical cases of sexual violence has further entrenched cycles of trauma and marginalization within affected communities,” the report said.
CRSV must be understood within a wider context of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) across the country. Official statistics and civil society reports indicated this to be a deeply rooted and systemic issue, with significant underreporting, limited access to justice and widespread stigmatization of survivors. In such a landscape, CRSV was not an incidental aberration but rather targeted manifestation of the broader societal failure to prevent and respond to SGBV. The post-conflict state’s failure to ensure accountability for wartime abuses mirrors its continued failure to protect vulnerable groups from sexual violence in peacetime, exposing a continuum of impunity and gendered harms, the report pointed out.
Many victims from the conflict that ended in 2009 continue to suffer chronic physical injuries, infertility, psychological breakdowns and suicidal thoughts. Survivors and their representatives described an enduring climate of surveillance, intimidation and harassment, contributing to under-reporting, deep stigma and the near-absence of effective remedies.
Beyond the shocking cruelty of the abuses including rape, sexual mutilation, forced nudity and public degradation described by survivors, many felt that such attacks were intended to cause lasting trauma and break down communities. As one survivor put it: “Sexual violence is a torture that never stops.”
The report found that stigma extends to survivors’ families and that children born of rape have been labelled and discriminated against. Communities remain fractured by silence, fear and unresolved trauma.
“The publication of the report must act as a clarion call for Sri Lanka’s government to finally deliver justice and accountability for the thousands of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. It reaffirms the widely-known truth that sexual violence against members of the Tamil community was ‘deliberate, widespread, and systemic,’” said Amnesty International.
“It also rightly recognizes that some of these acts may have amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. OHCHR’s findings further lay bare the failure of successive administrations to provide redress and the horrific impact it continues to have on survivors,” Amnesty International added.
“The new government committed itself to act, and the president himself declared: ‘If we fail to deliver justice, who else will?’ It’s time these words translated into action. We urge the authorities to heed the many useful recommendations in this report to end impunity and publicly commit to a timeline to implement long overdue steps that ensure the swift realization of truth, justice and reparations,” it said.
Read the full report here: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sri-lanka/2026-crsv-brief-english.pdf
