Sri Lanka, Human Rights and the United Nations

This book examines the engagement between the United Nations’ human rights machinery and the respective governments since Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) joined the United Nations.
Sri Lanka has a long and rich history of engagement with international human rights instruments. However, despite its active membership in the UN, the country’s post-colonial trials and tribulations are emblematic of the limited influence the international organisation has exerted on this country in the Global South.
Assessing the impact of this international engagement on the country’s human rights infrastructure and situation, the book outlines Sri Lanka’s colonial and post-colonial development. It then considers the development of a domestic human rights infrastructure in the country. It also examines and analyzes Sri Lanka’s engagement with the UN’s treaty-based and charter-based human rights bodies, before offering conclusions concerning the impact of said engagement. 
The book offers an innovative approach to gauging the impact of international human rights engagement, while also taking into account the colonial and post-colonial imperatives that have partly dictated governmental behaviour. By doing so, the book seeks to combine and analyse international human rights law, post-colonial critique, studies on biopower, and critical approaches to international law. It will be a useful resource not only for scholars of international law, but also for practitioners and activists working in this area.

Dr. Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan is currently teaching international law at Griffith College Dublin, Ireland.  He studied law in Bonn and Marburg, and following several years in the policy and research sector (e.g. for the German Labour Party, Friedrich-Ebert Foundation), he went on to work as a junior lawyer for the German Tenants’ Association. Subsequently, he resumed his law studies, which were supported by the German Tenant’s Association and the Scholarship “Deutschlandstiftung Integration”, and completed his postgraduate degree at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 2013. He went on to pursue a doctoral degree from the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, funded by the Irish Centre for Human Rights. His research interests include: Third World Approaches to International Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Critical Legal Theory, and Socio-political Approaches to International Law.