Forty nations, mostly European countries, have either become co-sponsors or additional sponsors of the pending UNHRC resolution over what it sees as deteriorating human rights conditions in Sri Lanka, reported The Daily Mirror. 

Out of 40 countries that have signed the draft resolution, 12 are currently members of the council and have voting rights thus making it hard for Sri Lanka to defeat it. India didn’t sign the draft despite the reference to the 13th amendment in it. 

The Sri Lankan government, despite reversing its policy of the forced cremation of the Covid-19 victims, has failed to convince the core group to remove the reference of the policy from the draft. 

The resolution will be put to vote on 22 March. Last week Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa held a telephonic conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi where the two leaders had discussed the ongoing cooperation in “bilateral and multilateral forums.”

However, the statement released by the office of the Indian Prime Minister had no mention of the issue of the UNHRC resolution. Experts claim it was unlikely that they had not discussed the issue. 

Importantly, the resolution calls for increased monitoring, including enhanced reporting by independent observers, of human rights conditions in the country. The island nation, on the other hand, has called such moves a “violation of the country’s sovereignty”.