The United Nations Human Rights Office has issued one of its starkest warnings yet on Sri Lanka, concluding that conflict-related sexual violence remains endemic, systematically unaddressed, and buried beneath what it describes as a “legacy of impunity” that continues to devastate lives more than fifteen years after the war officially ended. The paper, released this morning under the harrowing title “We lost everything – even hope for justice”, is not simply a retrospective account of wartime abuses. It is an indictment of the present, exposing how denial, inaction and intimidation have ensured that sexual violence has never truly ended for survivors.
Based on more than a decade of monitoring and reporting by the UN Human Rights Office, and extensive consultations with survivors, gender-based violence experts and civil society groups, the Brief dismantles the narrative that Sri Lanka has “moved on” from its civil war. Instead, it finds that the lack of accountability, acknowledgement and reparations for gross human rights violations has created conditions in which trauma is prolonged, justice remains elusive, and fear is a daily reality. As the document states plainly, “the lack of accountability, acknowledgment and reparations for gross human rights violations and wartime crimes has created a legacy of impunity that continues to shape the lives of survivors today.”
The war, which ended in 2009, is often presented by the Sri Lankan state as a closed chapter, a brutal conflict followed by peace and development. Yet for many survivors of sexual violence, the end of hostilities marked not a beginning of healing but the start of a long, grinding struggle with physical pain, psychological collapse and social isolation. The UN paper records that “many victims from the conflict which ended in 2009 continue to suffer chronic physical injuries, infertility, psychological breakdowns, and suicidal thoughts.” These are not abstract consequences. They are lived realities that have unfolded in silence, often behind closed doors, as survivors face stigma, disbelief and ongoing threats.
What makes the findings especially damning is the UN’s conclusion that sexual violence was not an incidental by-product of war, but a deliberate tool of abuse, control and humiliation. Survivors described acts of “rape, sexual mutilation, forced nudity and public degradation” that went far beyond physical violation. Many believed these assaults were “intended to cause lasting trauma and break down communities.” One survivor’s words, quoted directly in the report, strip away any remaining illusions about closure: “Sexual violence is a torture that never stops.”
The Brief highlights that both women and men were subjected to these crimes, challenging deeply entrenched assumptions that sexual violence in conflict is exclusively a women’s issue. Male survivors, in particular, face extreme stigma and invisibility, often compounded by cultural taboos that render their suffering unspeakable. The UN notes that survivors and their representatives consistently described “an enduring climate of surveillance, intimidation, and harassment,” which has contributed to chronic under-reporting and what the paper calls “the near-absence of effective remedies.” In such an environment, speaking out is not simply emotionally risky; it can be physically dangerous.
This climate of fear has not dissipated with time. On the contrary, the UN finds that militarisation and emergency legal frameworks have helped sustain conditions in which gender-based violence continued to be reported even after the war. According to the paper, “militarisation and emergency legal frameworks have created an environment in which gender-based violence – including sexual violence – continued to be reported after the conflict.” The implication is clear: the structures that enabled abuse were never dismantled, and in some cases were reinforced.
Perhaps most controversial is the UN’s assertion that Sri Lanka is not merely failing morally, but breaching its legal obligations under international law. The paper reminds readers that “sexual violence in conflict constitutes a serious violation of international law, which may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.” It further stresses that Sri Lanka is “legally obligated, under multiple international treaties and commitments, to prevent, investigate, and prosecute such violations and ensure reparation for survivors.” This is not a call for charity or goodwill, but a demand for compliance with binding international standards.
Yet accountability remains virtually non-existent. Survivors interviewed by the UN described a justice system that is inaccessible at best and hostile at worst. Police complaints go nowhere, investigations stall, and prosecutions are vanishingly rare. In some cases, survivors reported being questioned in humiliating ways, or warned against pursuing cases. The result, as the Brief concludes, is a system that reinforces silence rather than truth, fear rather than healing.
The damage does not stop with individual survivors. The UN paper documents how stigma “extends to survivors’ families” and how “children born of rape have been labelled and discriminated against.” These children, who carry no responsibility for the crimes that led to their birth, are nevertheless marked by social exclusion, suspicion and shame. Entire communities, the report finds, “remain fractured by silence, fear, and unresolved trauma.” In this sense, sexual violence has functioned not only as an attack on bodies, but as a long-term assault on social cohesion itself.
What makes the UN’s intervention particularly pointed is its insistence that reconciliation without truth and accountability is a hollow exercise. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk states that “recognition, truth, accountability, and reparations are critical to restoring dignity to survivors, and advancing reconciliation and healing in Sri Lanka.” This directly challenges the Sri Lankan government’s long-standing preference for forward-looking narratives that avoid confronting state responsibility. Without acknowledgment, the paper suggests, reconciliation becomes a slogan rather than a lived reality.
The Brief calls on the Government of Sri Lanka to take “immediate and concrete steps” that go far beyond symbolic gestures. Among its most significant demands is that the state must “publicly acknowledge past sexual violence committed by State forces and others, and issue a formal apology.” Such an apology would represent a seismic shift in official discourse, one that many survivors have waited decades to hear. The paper also urges the government to implement “survivor-centred reforms across the security sector, judiciary and the legal framework,” to establish an independent prosecution office, and to ensure access to “psychological and social support.”
These recommendations are not new, but the urgency with which they are presented reflects a growing impatience within the UN system. The paper concludes that Sri Lanka has already made commitments to advance domestic accountability, but has repeatedly failed to follow through. Each delay, the UN suggests, deepens the harm and entrenches distrust. Survivors are left with the bitter sense that justice is perpetually promised but never delivered.
The title of the Brief, “We lost everything – even hope for justice,” captures this exhaustion with brutal clarity. It is a statement not only of loss, but of abandonment. For many survivors, hope has been eroded not by the original violence alone, but by years of denial, deflection and impunity. The UN’s warning is that without decisive action, this erosion will continue, with profound consequences for Sri Lanka’s social fabric and international standing.
In exposing the ongoing reality of conflict-related sexual violence, the UN Human Rights Office has shattered the comfortable fiction that Sri Lanka’s war crimes belong solely to the past. The paper forces an uncomfortable reckoning: that peace built on silence is fragile, and that nations cannot outrun the crimes they refuse to confront. As long as survivors remain unheard and perpetrators unaccountable, sexual violence will not be a closed chapter, but an open wound.
