A/HRC/7/3/Add.6 page 10 I. LEGAL FRAMEWORK A. International level 18. Sri Lanka is party to the major United Nations human rights treaties prohibiting torture and ill-treatment: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment (CAT); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD); and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). 19. Sri Lanka has acceded to the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights5 and it ratified the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict. However, Sri Lanka has not signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, nor has it recognized the competence of the Committee against Torture to receive communications from other States parties as well as from or on behalf of individuals under the respective articles 21 and 22 of the Convention against Torture. 20. Sri Lanka is a party to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It has, however, not ratified the Additional Protocols to the Conventions, nor has it signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 21. Sri Lanka was the subject of a confidential inquiry by the Committee against Torture under article 20 of the Convention against Torture from April 1999 to May 2002. The Committee concluded on the basis of a visit of two Committee members to Sri Lanka in August 2000 that, although torture is frequently resorted to by the police, the army and paramilitaries, the practice of torture in Sri Lanka was not of a systematic nature. Following the recommendations, the Government of Sri Lanka appointed a permanent Inter-Ministerial Standing Committee and Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Human Rights Issues mandated to monitor action taken by government agencies relating to incidents/allegations of human rights violations. B. National level 1. Constitutional protection of human rights, including the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 22. Chapter III of the Constitution contains a set of fundamental rights and freedoms such as freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, punishment, freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement as well as the right to equality. 5 However, in its judgement in Nallaratnam Singarasa v. Attorney General (SC (Spl) L.A. No. 182/99) of 15 September 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that accession to the ICCPR Optional Protocol was unconstitutional. This seems to have posed direct obstacles to the campaign for the ratification of OPCAT.