Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
May 11, 2009

Leading human rights advocates, led by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, have written an open letter calling on the U.N. Security Council to take immediate action to prevent atrocities in Sri Lanka. A rebel force fighting the Sri Lankan government, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, is refusing to let noncombatants leave the combat zone and is using the noncombatants as human shields. The Sri Lankan army has begun a final assault on the rebels that could lead to the deaths of thousands of civilians.

John Holmes, the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, has said that “a bloodbath...seems an increasingly real possibility.” Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, has stated that casualties may reach “catastrophic levels” if the fighting is not stopped. “At the core [of the responsibility to protect] is the obligation to act preventively to protect peoples from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, rather than waiting until atrocities have already occurred, as states have too often done in the past,” said the letter’s signatories.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024