A Study of the Allegation of Denial of Humanitarian Assistance - An Analysis of the Charge against Sri Lanka in the OISL Report

Abstract

In 2009, Government of Sri Lanka militarily defeated the three decades old separatist armed conflict spearheaded by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In 2015, Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights conducted an investigation as requested by the Council of Human Rights. High Commissioner for Human Rights made 11 allegations in its final report and one of them is the denial of humanitarian assistance to civilians. The objective of this paper is to analyze this allegation. The research question is; did the Government of Sri Lanka deny humanitarian assistance to civilians during the last phase of operations in 2009? The qualitative methodology combined with doctrinal legal research methods were used for this purpose. Accordingly, the OISL Report, local and international sources such as local Acts, government reports, international treaties, resolutions of the relevant international bodies were used as primary and secondary sources. The main finding shows that parties to armed conflicts are legally bound to provide unhindered access to humanitarian assistance to civilians. The allegation against the Government of Sri Lanka is observed to be untenable in the absence of credible evidence. On the contrary, it is observed that the Government of Sri Lanka has provided relatively reasonable humanitarian assistance to civilians entrapped in the conflict zone.