Local Features

The concept of Responsibility to Protect has triggered resistance in many countries of the Global South precisely because of its potential misapplication to situations such as the Sri Lankan one. Lakshman Kadirgamar, the former Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, was one of the most incisive legal minds of his generation. A former president of the Oxford Union, he made significant contributions …

It would seem that disagreeing with Izeth Hussain is an offence punishable by deportation. As he pointed out in his charming letter of June 22nd entitled ‘Go home, Kath’, I devoted one paragraph of my last article to his comments on the Human Rights Council vote. My suggestion that he might offer to hold David Miliband’s bag while he gave …

Mao wrote famously, “Power flows through the barrel of a gun.” So do Constitutions. It is true that a Constitution, the fundamental law of the people, should have behind it a broad consensus among the people, but that consensus will mean nothing at all unless it is backed by the gun, with the means of legitimate violence in the hands …

Listening to people talk since the vote in the Human Rights Council, anybody would think that Sri Lanka’s approach to international relations was now clear. Newspapers have been full of praise for Dayan Jayatilleka and the principles he has been advocating. If they were genuinely convinced, I’d be delighted. I’ve always believed that a foreign policy based on solidarity with …

I refer to Demos’ comment under the above heading in the Island of June 22 on my article and that of Kath Noble in The Island of June 15 and 17 respectively. There has been much confusion about what has been meant by what came to be called megaphone diplomacy. It referred to statements made both by bureaucrats and politicians …