
Wed Oct 08 06:35:21 UTC 2025: Okay, here’s a news article summarizing the provided text, written from an Indian perspective:
**News Article:**
**UN Report Slams Sri Lanka’s Lack of Progress on Enforced Disappearances; Concerns Rise Over Accountability**
**Colombo -** A United Nations panel has issued a scathing report criticizing Sri Lanka’s persistent failure to adequately address cases of enforced disappearances, raising serious questions about accountability and justice for victims’ families. The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (UNCED), in a report released on October 7, 2025, highlighted a “high level of impunity” due to the lack of progress in investigating and prosecuting these alleged disappearances.
The report comes on the heels of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) extending its monitoring mandate on Sri Lanka for another two years, reflecting ongoing international concerns about human rights in the island nation.
A key point of concern is the ineffectiveness of the Office on Missing Persons (OMP), established in 2017 to address the long-standing demands of families searching for their loved ones. The UNCED report reveals that the OMP has only traced 23 out of nearly 17,000 cases it has received, casting doubt on its efficacy and raising concerns within the international community.
The UNCED has urged the OMP to establish a comprehensive register of all disappearances, actively search for missing persons, and ensure accountability through investigations and prosecutions. The panel also expressed alarm over the discovery of at least 17 mass graves and criticized the limitations in Sri Lanka’s forensic capacity, including the lack of centralized databases for ante-mortem and post-mortem information.
Thousands of people, predominantly Tamils, went missing during and after Sri Lanka’s civil war, which ended in 2009. The UNCED report is the latest in a series of international calls for Sri Lanka to address these issues and provide justice to the victims’ families. The lack of progress raises concerns in India, given the close proximity and the historical links between the two countries. The issue of Tamil rights in Sri Lanka has always been a sensitive one, with India closely monitoring the situation. The findings of the UNCED report will likely fuel further calls for a more robust and transparent process to address the issue of enforced disappearances and ensure accountability for those responsible.