Sri Lanka
After the outbreak of fighting in 1983 between the Sinhalese-led government in Colombo and a variety of armed Tamil separatist movements that were eventually absorbed into the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the population of Sri Lanka were subject to systematic human rights abuses.
The period immediately before and after the LTTE defeat by government forces in 2009 was characterized by systematic abuses. According to international human rights agencies, both the government and the rebels were responsible for tens of thousands of citizens going missing during the war. The broader conflict was exacerbated from 1987 to 1989 by fighting in the south of the country, principally among Sinhalese, between members of the Marxist JVP party and the Sri Lankan security forces.
In February 2018 seven Commissioners were appointed to the Office on Missing Persons, making it operational. A 2022 Amnesty International report found that “According to cases outstanding before the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in 2021, Sri Lanka had the second largest number of enforced disappearances in the world, recorded at 6,259 — second only to Iraq. Amnesty International estimates that there have been at least 60,000 and as many as 100,000 cases of enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka since the 1980s.”
