Geneva: The alleged war crimes during Sri Lanka's final assault on the LTTE will come up once again on Monday at the UNHRC, with the US set to bring a resolution supporting a domestic investigation unlike previous ones in which it insisted on an international probe.
The draft has been sponsored by the US and other core group of countries called 'Human Rights in Sri Lanka, with focus on government efforts to provide reconciliation and accountability and based on findings of OHCHR report'.
"The High Commissioner (for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein) will present the findings of his office on the allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka to the Council," Ambassador Joachim Ruecker, the President of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) said.
The presentation of the report was deferred until this month by the UNHRC as a goodwill gesture towards the government of Maithripala Sirisena who succeeded Mahinda Rajapaksa as the President of Sri Lanka in January.
The Rajapaksa administration resisted the investigation dubbing it an impingement on the country's sovereignty. The Sirisena government, however, engaged the UN and the larger international community in contrast to the Rajapaksa administration and sought to address some of the concerns of the Tamil minority.
The OHCHR report was handed over to Colombo on Friday night. The Lankan government has five days to make its response in writing. "This will be a very interesting session, once again," Ruecker said, commenting on the three-week long regular session of the UNHRC.
"Country-specifically we will talk of Democratic Republic of Congo, we will speak about Sri Lanka, we will speak about Ukraine and Syria, once again," said Ruecker, a veteran German diplomat who was appointed as UNHRC President in January. Of particular significance to India will be the issue of Sri Lanka. While India had supported US-sponsored resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013, it abstained from voting in 2014 stating that it is "India's firm belief that adopting an intrusive approach that undermines national sovereignty and institutions is counter-productive."
The issue would be a tricky terrain for India as DMK chief M Karunanidhi has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to back the US-sponsored resolution which has reportedly been watered-down seeking a domestic inquiry on war crimes. Apart from the Lankan issue, the session will also see draft resolutions on Syria, Yemen, Sudan, death penalty, indigenous peoples, rights of migrants, right to peace, countering violent extremism, among others.
Rights group claim that Lankan military killed 40,000 civilians in the final months of the three decade-long war with the LTTE in 2009. Since its establishment in 2006, there has been huge increase in HRC's initiatives - an explosion of resolutions, special procedure mandate holders and independent experts as well as a multiplying of side events engendering the criticism that the structure has become unwieldy.
"We have seen a steep increase," Ruecker said, adding it reflects the "success story of the HRC and the trust that member states have put into the structure and the mechanism." He said even though the HRC's mandate has increased exponentially, the financing is considerably tight.
"I think if you look at the financing of the human rights pillar, from our Geneva perspective, it does not receive enough financing - the crisis and the problems increase and the finances are not sufficient, including, the finances from the regular budget of the UN," rues Ruecker.
Asked how effective are UNHRC resolutions and reports from Commission of Inquiries (CoIs) on the ground in terms of their tangible impacts, he said that the HRC does "contribute" to a political solution albeit playing a "limited role".
"I think you have to look at the particular angle which we cover, which is, the human rights angle. We do not have a mandate for peace and security - that's the Security Council - and wider political mandate to solve conflicts. "However, having said that if you look at the contribution we make from our particular angle, I think, it is a very significant contribution that leads, or at least, can lead to changes, also in the political field," he added.
He cited two instances - the CoI on Syria and resolutions against Israel - and said the CoI has been regularly updating the HRC with ensuing resolutions but the conflict in Syria is only intensifying with ISIS capturing more and more territory, while resolutions against Israel are in a record number, but the Palestine question remains unresolved with worsening human rights situation for the Palestinians.
The HRC, notwithstanding its contribution to giving voices to victims, is an intensely political space, where battle lines and loyalties between member states are drawn with little resonance to the commitment to protecting human rights - considered the third pillar in the UN system.
"We don't even say third pillar-we say, three pillars and don't rank them," Ruecker said. "Human rights, of course, is per se political. So I am bit skeptical when people say we should avoid the politicisation of the Council - the Council is per se political," Ruecker said.
But during his tenure of presidency, Ruecker said, he has tried to avoid "unnecessary politicisation" by which he means "importing, let's say, political conflicts that do not belong to the core of our human rights angle, for example, bilateral-territorial conflicts."
On accusation of council being "biased", Ruecker said that there is no singularisation of any state.
The Israeli envoy to the UNOG reacting to a resolution on Palestine in June this year had said that "the Council has lost its bearing". The US also accuses the Council of "bias" against Israel while Myanmar makes similar statements reacting to resolutions pertaining to Rohingya Muslims.
"There is no bias because all the 193 states undergo this procedure. Since you mention, for example, the US - they had more than 300 recommendations in their UPR which we conducted in 2015. And amongst them, of course, very serious ones," avers Ruecker.
On another accusation that since almost 80 per cent of the HRC's funding comes from the developed economies, the bulk of the managerial and other positions in the secretariat - the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) - goes to the industrialised countries, he said there have been resolutions for the transparency in staffing and funding of the HRC mainly sponsored by developing countries.
"I think we can always work in the UN system towards better gender and geographical balance towards the staffing of the UN, in general, also the OHCHR, in particular," he said. "I am not sure if we should jump to that conclusion (of favouring certain projects against certain countries) but the solution for that problem - if we assume it creates a problem for the OHCHR - it is certainly that the OHCHR should get more regular budget funds from the UN in that this balance between voluntary and regular budget should be redressed in the sense that most of its income should come from the regular budget," he added.
He said that a key priority of his Presidency term has been to keep civil society as an integral part of the Council. "One of the things under this headline is that, of course, we go very thoroughly after each case of reprisals against human rights defenders that comes to my attention," the German diplomat said.
"Because we need the civil society otherwise we cannot function, we need this critical mirror of the civil society in order to assess our work and progress with regard to protection of human rights and projection of human rights," Ruecker said.
He described his role as the President as "challenging so far" but said "it is not over yet". "I think, there has been an evolution that has increased the meaning of human rights pillar in the past 70 years, in particular, during the last, let's say, 20 or 25 years specially since the Vienna Conference in 1993," Ruecker said.
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