COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

SRI LANKA 7 MARCH 2012
22.04 The UN Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women, Sri Lanka 441 , dated 4 February 2011 observed:
―The Committee commends the efforts undertaken by the State party to combat
trafficking, including the introduction of a new definition of the offence of trafficking in
persons in the Penal Code, the organization of awareness-raising activities and the
establishment of an Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force. The Committee further
commends that a bill on witness protection is being elaborated. The Committee is,
however, concerned at the low number of convictions and punishment of those
convicted of trafficking and at the lack of protective measures and safe homes for
victims of trafficking. It is also concerned that the State party has not ratified the
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women
and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational
Organized Crime.‖
22.05 Additional, detailed information on this subject is available from the UNOG (United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) report Legal and Policy Review - Responses to
Human Trafficking in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, dated 28 April 2011 and
accessible from the hyperlink.
See also Women; Children and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
23. MEDICAL ISSUES
OVERVIEW OF AVAILABILITY OF MEDICAL TREATMENT AND DRUGS
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23.01 A letter from the British High Commission (BHC) Colombo dated 25 October 2010 442
reported:
―The mission statement of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health is ‗To contribute to social
and economic development of Sri Lanka by achieving the highest attainable health
status through promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative services of high quality
made available and accessible to the people of Sri Lanka‘ www.health.gov.lk. The
government of Sri Lanka promotes the fact that they provide free healthcare to all
citizens through their national health service. A substantial budget is allocated for the
purchase of drugs, enabling the population to purchase them at reasonable rates.
―We recently spoke to the General Manager of the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation
of Sri Lanka (SPC). He told us that the SPC came under the Ministry of Health, but was
an independent body with 784 employees. The administrative centre of the corporation
was based in central Colombo, and co-ordinated 24-hour cover through pharmaceutical
retail outlets nationwide. He explained that they had 52 distributors who were private
companies working on a commission basis, and 74 different franchises. They also had a
tie-up with the Cargill‘s supermarket chain, with each store having a pharmaceutical
counter manned by their own staff, which was part of the SPC distribution network.
441 UN Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women,
Sri Lanka 441 , 4 February 2011 http://www2.ohchr.org/tbru/cedaw/CEDAW-C-LKA-CO-7.pdf , date
accessed 25 May 2011, p5
442 British High Commission Colombo, letter to the UKBA COI Service, dated 25 October 2010
172 The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.