Addressing the media this morning on the National Action Plan for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Plantation Industries and the Special Envoy of the President on Human Rights, said Sri Lanka will update the progress of the Plan at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March next year.
He said the Plan was implemented in a transparent manner and developed through the participatory process involving government and civil society. When it was submitted to the Cabinet for approval and formal adoption, it was adopted with amendments made by the Cabinet Ministers.
The five-year action plan will be implemented under eight sections including civil and political rights, social economic and cultural rights, rights of abstinence from torture, women and children rights.
The Plan will be implemented by different ministries and institutions while an inter-ministerial committee will monitor the process.
The government expects to strengthen civil liberties and ensure better human rights compliance through the implementation of the Plan. It will be distributed to all ministries tomorrow.
The Minister further said that the National Action Plan will be submitted to the UN Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay, INGOs, NGOs, Diplomatic Missions and other respective officials.
Meanwhile, Mohan Peiris, the former Attorney General, who was a member of the delegation that addressed the 18th sessions of UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, said measures are underway to include the Human Rights studies in the school curriculum.
Addressing the media this morning in Colombo Peiris said that it is necessary to introduce human rights studies at the primary academic level other than educating human rights to the elderly populace.
Sri Lankan government is under increasing pressure from Western governments and human rights organizations to improve its abysmal human rights record amid the allegations of war crimes committed during the final stages of the 30-year long bloody battle with the Tamil Tiger terrorists.
Rights groups and certain Western governments have called for an independent international investigation into the charges that the government troops allegedly committed war crimes during the last phase of the war in the North.
The government vehemently rejects the allegations saying that it conducted a humanitarian operation to free nearly 300,000 Tamils held as a human shield by the terrorist group, liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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