News: Navi Pillay

Ivan Šimonović, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights New York Office, delivered a statement on behalf of High Commissioner Navi Pillay, echoing similar concerns. He said that, although the world body did not have peace missions in Libya, Syria or Sri Lanka, it must establish accountability for human rights violations there. “In Syria, we must prevent the ongoing, violent suppression of mass protests from plunging the country into a full-fledged armed conflict,” he emphasized. At the request of the Human Rights Council, he continued, the New York Office would send an investigative mission to Syria, which would present a preliminary report in July and its full findings in September. To aid victims and advance long-term reconciliation in Sri Lanka, he urged that country’s Government to implement the recommendations of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts, which had concluded that Government forces as well as fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had seriously violated international law in the final stage of the country’s decades-long civil conflict. Furthermore, in defining a new mandate for Southern Sudan, the Council should take into account detailed information on the human rights situation there, and include robust language on human rights protection and promotion.