UN failed to protect Sri Lankan Tamils: UN analyst report

The United Nations failed in its mandate to protect civilians in the last months of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, a leaked draft of a highly critical internal UN report says. "Events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN to adequately respond to early warnings... during the final stages of conflict," it concludes. The government and separatist Tamil rebels are accused of war crimes in the conflict, which ended in May 2009. The war killed at least 100,000 people. There are still no confirmed figures for civilian deaths in the last months of battle. A UN investigation said it was possible up to 40,000 people were killed in the final five months alone. Others suggest the number of deaths could be even higher. Former senior UN official Charles Petrie, who headed the internal review panel,siad the "penultimate" draft "very much reflects the findings of the panel". He is now in New York to present the report to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Sources say an executive summary, which sets out the panel's conclusions in stark terms, has been removed in a final report which will number about 30 pages. There was no immediate response from the UN, which does not comment on leaked reports. But senior UN sources say the secretary general plans to publish the hard hitting review, and act on its wide-ranging recommendations in order to "learn lessons" and respond more effectively to major new crises such as Syria now confronting the international community. The UN's investigation into its own conduct during the last months of the conflict says the organisation should in future "be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities". It identifies "systemic failure" in a number of areas, and describes the internal UN crisis-management structure as "incoherent". The panel questions decisions such as the withdrawal of UN staff from the war zone in September 2008 after the Sri Lankan government warned it could no longer guarantee their safety. Despite a "catastrophic" situation on the ground, this report bluntly explains that in the capital Colombo "many senior UN staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility - and agency and department heads at UNHQ were not instructing them otherwise". It says there was "a sustained and institutionalized reluctance" among UN personnel in Sri Lanka "to stand up for the rights of people they were mandated to assist". Citing detailed records of meetings and reports, the review highlights how the UN did not publish mounting civilian casualty figures even though they had "been verified to a good standard". Under severe pressure from the Sri Lankan government, it also did not make clear most deaths were caused by government shelling of "no fire zones" designated as havens for civilians. How did the UN failure happen? The report explores at length how senior staff in Colombo "had insufficient political expertise and experience in armed conflicts and in human rights... to deal with the challenge that Sri Lanka presented", and were not given "sufficient policy and political support" from headquarters. It also points to the Sri Lankan government's "stratagem of intimidation", including "control of visas to sanction staff critical of the state". The result was a UN system dominated by "a culture of trade-offs" - UN staff chose not to speak out against the government in an effort to try to improve humanitarian access. http://eng.lankasri.com/view.php?2bAAlv4a2B5Yce424mM0c22aAmB23d2PBAce0d6MAYce0KA5V0c22XO4d2