The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution on Sri Lanka last week, extending the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) for a further two years. This extension will allow the OHCHR to continue gathering and preserving evidence that can be used in future war crime trials. When those trials will be, however, is the question that no one is able to answer. More than 16 years after the genocide at Mullivaikkal, impunity still reigns in Sri Lanka. And the UN has just given Colombo another carte blanche.

At the United Nations General Assembly last week, Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Despite the rhetoric, Dissanayake pointedly avoided naming the state responsible for those atrocities: Israel. This was not an oversight, but a calculated choice.

An unprecedented number of events took place across the North-East last week. Hunger strikes were staged. Flames were lit and garlands laid. The elderly and children gathered together. A kavadi even procession took place, with hooks piercing the flesh of a devotee in a symbolic act of devotion. All to remember the LTTE’s Lt. Col. Thileepan – a young man who undertook a hunger strike until death thirty-eight years ago, demanding justice for his people.

Last week, Tamil farmers in Mayilaththamadu and Mathavanai marked 730 consecutive days of protest. For two years, through scorching heat and monsoon rains, they have maintained a peaceful vigil, demanding the return of 3,025 hectares of grazing land and an end to Sinhala settler violence. Despite their longstanding and peaceful protest, their demands have fallen on deaf ears.

To call the latest draft resolution from the UNHRC in Geneva disappointing would be too kind. It is a disastrous step backwards in the longstanding struggle for justice.

There will be few tears shed at the news that Ranil Wickremesinghe has been arrested by Sri Lankan authorities. Like many from Sri Lanka’s entrenched political elite, the former president and six-time prime minister has many questions to answer.

Last week, a much awaited new UN report was released. For many, the document made for familiar reading. The report was damning in its findings. But its conclusion, was starkly weak, once again placing the onus on Sri Lanka to do what it never will – hold war criminals to account.

Despite the promises of a new era under Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s administration, little has changed on the ground. For Tamils, the surveillance, harassment, and intimidation persists.

The story of Gary Anandansagaree, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, is impressive. He came to the country as a child just weeks after the Black July pogrom of 1983, where Sri Lankan state-backed mobs murdered thousands of Tamils just like him.

This week, France’s president Emmanuel Macron announced his government would move to recognise the State of Palestine. Though not the first state, nor even first European country, to do so, as a G7 nation and permanent member of the UN Security Council, the move carries significant weight.