Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, located at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It was colonised by the British for 150 years before gaining independence in 1948. Its political system makes the elected president head of both government and state, with a prime minister and cabinet sitting beneath them. In July 2022, popular protests led to the ousting of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Elections then led to former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe assuming the presidency and imposing harsh austerity measures, ostensibly to try to stabilise the economy. He left office following elections in September 2024, and was recently arrested on corruption charges. ¹

In 1948, the same year the country gained independence, the government established the Ceylon Citizenship Act, which denied citizenship rights to Indian Tamils. Sinhalese constitute the majority of the population, with Sri Lankan Tamils a significant minority (currently just over 11%). ¹

In 1983, events that become known as the Black July led to a 26-year civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and successive governments. It is estimated that it “killed about 100,000 people [and] displaced about 800,000.” ²  In the final months of the conflict, Amnesty International reported that at least 10,000 civilians were killed. ³

Political autonomy for the Tamil people and and issues of transitional justice have not been adequately addressed by the succeeding governments in power in the country. The ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’, a government-led initiative that concluded in 2011, had “inadequate mandate, insufficient guarantees of independence, and lack of witness protection,” according to international NGOS. ⁴

The International Centre for Counter Terrorism has put it bluntly: “Sri Lanka can be seen as an example of failed transitional justice.” ⁵ The political establishment remains dominated by an elite that has stayed in power throughout the years since independence. ⁶ The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned in August 2025 that “the structural conditions that led to past violations persist.” ⁷ In 2020, according to academic Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan, the country had the second-highest number of enforced disappearances in the world, after Iraq. ⁸

In 2022, the government proposed amendments to its Prevention of Terrorism Act, first established in 1979 as a supposedly temporary measure. ⁹ Seven UN special rapporteurs said the amendments failed to address the Act’s “vague terminology, its lack of protection for fundamental human rights, and a lack of independent oversight.” The experts deplored the fact that “the proposed legislation does not remedy any of these defects.” ¹⁰ 

In August 2025, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that there was no progress on “the structural conditions that led to past violations” and that 38 people were arrested without any evidence under the anti-terrorism law in 2024, and 49 in the first four months of 2025.” ¹¹ According to Human Rights Watch, journalists and families of disappeared persons have been the main targets of the government. ¹²

Sri Lanka has a close relationship with the United Nations, through both its human rights and counter-terrorism systems. The longstanding engagement of the country with the UN institutions on human rights has not led to significant progress. But the relationship between the government and state agencies of Sri Lanka on the one hand, and UN counter-terrorism bodies on the other, has made the country a trailblazer in terms of technology transfer and capacity-building.

Travel surveillance and passenger profiling

In September 2015, a UN report described a “campaign of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, detention and other violations against human rights defenders and others” that was intended to deter engagement with the office of the UN. ¹ A follow-up report noted slow progress on justice and reconciliation and denounced the routine use of torture as well as a prevailing culture of immunity from the security forces. ²

The country’s political established reacted by demonising the international human rights infrastructure as “an imperial tool,” according to Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan. ³ In the field of security, however, the relationship between UN agencies and the Sri Lankan authorities has been radically different.

The Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate has led two assessment visits to Sri Lanka, in October 2014 and April 2016. ⁴ In 2018, just a year after the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism began its work, the permanent mission of Sri Lanka to the UN welcomed its “focus on capacity-building assistance to Member States.” ⁵ The same same year, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime provided national officials with training on strengthening national counter-terrorism laws. ⁶

In 2019, Sri Lanka became one of the first beneficiary states of the UN’s Countering Terrorist Travel Programme. ⁷ This is designed to help beneficiary states set up travel surveillance and passenger profiling systems, involving the processing of Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR) data.

It is unclear precisely what support Sri Lanka has received from the programme, but a former UN special rapporteur noted that the country has “extremely concerning records of systematic human rights abuse, particularly in respect of the sort of surveillance and persecution of dissidents and journalists which API/PNR data systems facilitate.” ⁸

Watchlisting

In August 2019, Jürgen Stock, secretary general of Interpol, posed for photos with the then-President of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena. He was in Sri Lanka to praise the president for its swift cooperation with Interpol following terrorist attacks in Colombo that killed 270 people. ⁹

Cooperation between the country and the international police agency has been long-running. From 2017 to 2019, the agency ran a “capacity building initiative for law enforcement agencies in South and Southeast Asia aimed at preventing and disrupting terrorism and related transnational crime.” ¹⁰ It also cooperated with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime on a subsequent similar initiative. ¹¹

In 2022, a new operation to disrupt terrorist networks in Sri Lanka adopted the motto “right data, right place, right time.” ¹² One objective of the project was the systematic inclusion of biometrics in Interpol alerts linked to suspected terrorists. However, manual collection of suspects’ biometrics may become a thing of the past. Sri Lanka is setting up a Unique Digital Identity to assist with “smart governance,” ¹³ would could make it possible for the police to directly access digital identity data.

The website of Sri Lanka’s data protection authority says it made “history as the first South Asian country to enact independent legislation for personal data protection with the Personal Data Protection Act No. 9 of 2022 (PDPA).” ¹ However, the willingness of the government to respect and promote a law that gives individuals protection, ownership and right to seek redress to their personal data quickly came into conflict ² with their security-related concerns. In 2024, the government adopted the Online Safety Act, which, according to the civil society organisation Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, “criminalise a wide range of online expressions and deters individuals from voicing criticisms against the government.” ³