Sri Lankan Government Denies Entry to Aid Groups, Raising Humanitarian Law Questions

Even as the catastrophic human tragedy unfolds in Sri Lanka, the island's government is refusing to allow aid workers or journalists into the country, banning the delivery of humanitarian relief outside of the official camps. With at least 50,000 civilians unable to escape the exchange of gunfire and shelling between the military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) along the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka, a UN spokesman described the disintegrating situation as a "bloodbath." The Sri Lankan government's actions have directly jeopardized the lives and security of tens of thousands of citizens, violating long accepted standards for humanitarian aid.

(AP photo)

As an uninterrupted stream of civilians pour into inadequately stocked or staffed refugee camps, the urgent appeal for clean water and food, medical supplies, and basic amenities has been ignored by Sri Lankan officials. According to Anna Neistat, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, "since September 2008 the government banned all international organizations' humanitarian agencies."

On May 14, 2009, the Red Cross attempted to deliver food [1] and evacuate the wounded by ferry but violence prevented them from doing so for the third consecutive day. Sarasi Wijeratne, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said, "The situation is becoming desperate because of the fighting, which is intense and uninterrupted."

[1]Independent verification of the casualties or accusations made by either the government or rebels has been difficult to obtain, since the military has prevented journalists from entering the war zones and refugee camps. On May 10 the government expelled three journalists [2] working for British television, most likely for their accounts of the destitute situation experienced by thousands in the refugee camps. Bernard Kouchner, the French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, responded to the government's refusal to allow external groups from providing relief by saying "We are ready to help."

Diplomatic efforts to provide help for the civilians have been stymied by the government's refusal to grant visas to NGO employees [3] and excessive barriers to the thousands of Internally Displaced People (IDP) forced to remain in the squalid camps. The UN estimates there are 150,000 to 200,000 IDPs at the camps near Vavuniya, Mannar and Jaffna. The government claims that permission to exit the camps must be denied so they can determine if any LTTE members are hiding among the civilians.  Neistat called for the removal of the restrictive measure, saying [4] she did not believe "that there is any justification for keeping people in indefinite internment in these camps."

On May 11, 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a statement [5]appealing to the government to "Explore all options to bring the conflict to end without further bloodshed." The UN also called on the Sri Lankan authorities to remove a ban on aid groups delivering aid outside of the refugee camps. According to the Times Online [6], the ban meant "£2.5 million of British emergency aid has to be channeled into the barbed-wire enclosures" of the camps.

The Sri Lankan government refused entry to Carl Bildt, the Swedish Foreign Minister, who had hoped to join his British and French counterparts in the country in calling for a ceasefire and appealing to Sri Lankan officials to allow aid organizations access. The Swedish ambassador was recalled from the country and Bildt called the Sri Lankan denial of entry, "exceedingly strange behaviour.”

The behavior exhibited by the Sri Lankan government is also considered unusual by Neistat. Despite having worked in several places with governments not wanting "the outside world to know what's happening" she found the situation in Sri Lanka, "unprecedented." Speaking about the dearth of verifiable information coming out of the country, Neistat said, "It is incredible and incredibly cynical how the Sri Lankan government has managed to completely close these areas off from outside scrutiny...we have to remember that all that is happening, again it's the background of crack-down on civil society in Sri Lanka more broadly. So we cannot really rely on Sri Lankan civil groups, civil society groups and journalists, to report much from the area. And finally, from everything we understand, relief agencies and local NGOs and choice groups were pretty much all threatened into silence, very effectively so. The government has been playing the, you know, access versus silence card very, very effectively."

If the conflict were an international one it is possible the Geneva Conventions would apply. Article 3 requires governments to give aid groups access to non-combatants in order to provide humanitarian aid.