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In a statement during the Human Rights Council's 58th session, Sri Lankan environmental defender Melani Gunathilaka spoke of the human rights impacts that debt-driven economic policies have had in Sri Lanka.
Melani Gunathilaka, a Sri Lankan human rights defender, delivered a statement under Item 3 General Debate highlighting the detrimental effect on human rights of economic and debt-driven policies pushed by international financial institutions.
Watch and read her statement below:
We welcome the various reports under Item 3 that have focused on food and foreign debt. These reports are particularly important considering the impacts that some governmental measures have on the enjoyment of human rights.
For decades, neoliberal policies promised growth but instead delivered poverty, environmental degradation, and rising inequality. In 2022, Sri Lanka was forced into an International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity deal as a result of a crisis driven by [foreign currency] shortages and debt defaults, shattering the illusion of growth-driven development and laying bare the injustices of the global financial system. The shrinking of civic space and continuous human rights violations after the 2022 protest movement also exposed deep-rooted systemic injustice.
1.65 million smallholder farmers in Sri Lanka work on less than 2 hectares each yet produce 80% of the country’s food. But debt-driven policies from the IMF, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have collapsed food sovereignty. Structural adjustment programmes push Sri Lanka to prioritise export cash crops over domestic food. Agribusiness control, high taxes, and capital-intensive farming weaken small farmers’ control over seeds, fertilisers, and chemicals.
Market deregulation backed by international financial institutions favours big businesses, lowering prices for farmers while limiting alternatives like agro-ecology, cooperatives, and shared labour. Decades of agricultural modernisation have trapped smallholders in unsustainable market mechanisms. Excessive agrochemical use has destroyed ecological balance, food sovereignty, and biodiversity.
These gender-oppressive policies hit women farmers hardest. They face land dispossession, lack of credit, and growing care burdens under austerity. Marginalised communities impacted by reduced social protection are further excluded from decision-making.
The September 2024 International Sovereign Bond deal, rushed during elections, bypassed democratic scrutiny and locked Sri Lanka into creditor-friendly terms. While 26% of Sri Lankans lived below the poverty line in 2023, the deal protects lenders over people. By allowing creditors to dictate governing law, it undermines sovereignty and ignores demands for debt cancellation.
True sovereignty means cancelling illegitimate debt and protecting people, not profits. This would also mean establishing measures to make financial institutions accountable for their involvement in human rights violations. Finally, we call on the Human Rights Council to call on Sri Lanka to ensure transparency in debt negotiations and agreements, and to conduct a debt audit and to declare illegitimate debt for Sri Lanka.
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