Sri Lanka - International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: The Death Penalty - January 2023
Country: Sri Lanka
Issues: Death Penalty, International Advocacy, Women's Rights
Mechanism: UN Human Rights Committee
Report Type: Stakeholder Report
This report address Sri Lanka’s Compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its human rights obligations with regard to its use of the death penalty.
While Sri Lanka continues to acknowledge itself as a de facto abolitionist state, it continues to
sentence people to death while also recently expanding the death penalty to apply to drug-related offenses. Even in light of Sri Lanka's assertion that it does not intend to carry out any
executions, its expansion of the death penalty to additional offenses not limited to the most
serious crimes demonstrates a regression away from abolition. Further, research suggests that
detention conditions continue to remain poor. Despite these setbacks, Sri Lanka has taken
significant steps in attempting to address concerns relating to torture and ill-treatment of people
in detention and the overcrowding in prisons by putting the necessary committees in place to
implement positive changes.
