ABSTRACT
Justice, accountability, and redress for victims of Sri Lanka's post-independence legacy of human rights violations are largely unmet. This chapter contends that national investigative commissions provided a marginal level of truth-seeking, particularly around forensic and narrative truth, although structurally flawed and compromised, and judicial and reparative outcomes were minimal. It argues that the collapse of the most recent formal transitional justice process cannot be explained through national political dynamics alone. Victim exclusion and the internationally prescriptive model of transitional justice were also contributing factors. Drawing on the 2022 protest movement it concludes that peace and democracy in Sri Lanka are contingent on accountability and structural change.
