Article
Three decades after ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Sri Lanka's promises to protect and promote the rights of children remain painfully disconnected from reality. During the Aragalaya, citizens called for a better country for children, but the demand did not translate into decisive reform or sustained accountability.
The country entered the 42nd session of the fourth cycle of the UNHRC Universal Periodic Review in Geneva with Stop Child Cruelty Trust representing Sri Lanka's children at the pre-sessions. Yet the record presented by the article is bleak: children continue to face physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and institutional failures at a scale that no child-rights framework should permit.
Context and justification
From July 2020 to July 2022, sixteen children were physically, sexually abused, neglected, or murdered. At the same time, the government failed to take effective steps to protect roughly 5.2 million children, about 25 percent of the population. The article argues this is an unprecedented level of unnatural deaths for a country not facing war, famine, natural disaster, or disease.
Failure to implement national action plans
Sri Lanka accepted recommendations in the third UPR cycle to prohibit corporal punishment in all settings, including the home, and to improve access to justice and complaint mechanisms for vulnerable children. However, the National Human Rights Action Plan and later child-protection commitments did not produce the concrete results that were promised.
Failure to end corporal punishment in schools and homes
Although the Ministry of Education issued Circular No. 12/2016 on maintaining discipline in schools, corporal punishment remained common. The article cites National Child Protection Authority figures showing that cruelty to children remained one of the most reported forms of abuse between 2010 and 2022, with thousands of cases recorded each year.
Failure to protect children in international schools
The circular has never been properly enforced in international schools. A landmark case involving an eleven-year-old girl at Gateway College, Negombo, exposed how children outside the state school system can be left unprotected. The article notes that the case was eventually registered at the UN Human Rights Committee, but the state party repeatedly missed deadlines to respond.
Failure to implement juvenile justice reforms
The article also criticizes the continued use of outdated laws, the absence of meaningful juvenile justice reform, and the failure to repeal contradictory Penal Code provisions. It points out that the Child Protection and Justice Bill remains unfinished and that the Children and Young Persons Ordinance still has not been repealed as proposed.
Failure by police and probation services
The piece ends with some of the strongest criticism of the police and probation systems, describing cases of unlawful detention, abuse in state care, and institutional impunity. It argues that people paid and empowered to protect children have instead contributed to a system of neglect, delay, and repeated harm.