Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to uphold the human rights of the Tamil people and to support the establishment of democratically accountable institutions in Sri Lanka.

​The UK is committed to the full implementation of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 34/1, under which Sri Lanka committed to implement a range of measures to provide for human rights, truth-seeking, reconciliation, and devolution of political powers following the end of its civil war. I encouraged Foreign Minister Marapana to continue to make progress on these commitments when I met him last October in Colombo. Our High Commissioner in Sri Lanka regularly travel to the North and East and I joined him in Jaffna during my most recent visit to meet with Tamil groups, and where we have specific human rights concerns we raise these with the Sri Lankan government.

The UK is also providing Sri Lanka with £6.6 million of Conflict, Stability and Security Fund funding over three years, to include support for police reform and training, reconciliation and peace building, and demining in the north of the country.