Sri Lanka called for strict adherence to international law and international humanitarian law amid the continuing conflicts in West Asia, and questioned the resources the world spends on weapons, in its national statement to the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday.
“We need a world where our capacity to uphold humanity grows faster than our capacity to destroy it. That is the transformation we should seek,” the statement said, as reported by the Daily Mirror. It said the global security environment had deteriorated significantly in recent years, questioning continued spending on armaments while children faced starvation and lacked access to medicine and education.
Sri Lanka said the West Asian conflicts carried direct security, economic and social consequences for the country, given its position in the Indian Ocean and the large number of Sri Lankan migrant workers in the region.
The March rescue, cited as precedent
The statement invoked the rescue of sailors from a vessel belonging to a party to a conflict after it ran into distress near Sri Lankan territorial waters in March. “While safeguarding our neutrality, we placed humanity above all else,” it said, describing how the country mobilised limited resources to treat wounded sailors and later rescued hundreds more.
It quoted President Anura Kumara Dissanayake: “we will never hesitate to protect humanity. If there are actions that must be taken to protect human lives, we will not hesitate to take them under any circumstance.”
The vessel was the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena, sunk by a US submarine off the southern coast on March 4.
Palestine
Sri Lanka said it was “pained” by developments in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and reaffirmed support for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people including self-determination. It recalled that Sri Lanka was among the states that recognised Palestine in the 1980s, and backed an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel within pre-1967 borders.
It welcomed the Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, said humanitarian assistance “must reach civilians without obstruction”, and called Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction an urgent priority. Dialogue, it said, remained the only viable way forward.
The priorities, finally named
The Daily Mirror’s account attributes the statement to “Sri Lanka” without naming a speaker. Newswire reports it was delivered by Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, consistent with the month of advance notice that he would deliver Sri Lanka’s statement on September 28.
Newswire’s account covers ground the Daily Mirror omits. On climate, Herath said countries contributing least to emissions bore the harshest consequences, citing Cyclone Ditwah, which he said killed hundreds in Sri Lanka and affected more than two million people. “Climate justice must become an urgent reality,” he said, adding that Sri Lanka was on track for 70% renewable energy by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.
On the economy, he said macroeconomic stability had been restored after the 2022 crisis but the country remained vulnerable to debt and external shocks, and renewed Sri Lanka’s call for reform of the international financial system and fairer rules on debt and development finance. He said the government was strengthening institutions to address outstanding issues from the civil conflict and pursuing corruption prosecutions without political interference, and called for equitable access to technology, noting Sri Lanka had developed national guidelines on the ethical use of artificial intelligence.
That closes a gap seven previous reports left open. Every account since September 8 promised Herath would set out Sri Lanka’s foreign policy priorities; none named one. The statement itself supplies them: climate justice, debt and financial-system reform, Gaza, transitional justice and technology access.
