; Whereas Richard Boucher, then-Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, acknowledged during a visit to wartime Sri Lanka on June 1, 2006, that There are legitimate issues that are raised by the Tamil community, and they have a very legitimate desire, as anybody would, to be able to control their own lives, to rule their own destinies and to govern themselves in their homeland; in the areas they’ve traditionally inhabited. ; Whereas, in a joint statement by the United Nations Secretary General and the President of Sri Lanka following the Secretary General’s visit to Sri Lanka in May 2009, Sri Lanka gave assurance to find a lasting political solution addressing the aspirations and grievances of all communities and to an accountability process for addressing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law; Whereas the United States cosponsored the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution, HRC 51/L.1 (2022), which emphasizes the importance of elections and referendums to strengthen the democratic process, calls upon the Government of Sri Lanka to fulfill its commitments to the devolution of political authority, and extends and reinforces the capacity of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to collect, consolidate, analyze, and preserve information and evidence, and to develop possible strategies for future accountability processes; Whereas the January 2021 report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warns that Sri Lanka’s current trajectory sets the scene for the recurrence of the policies and practices that gave rise to grave human rights violations and Given the demonstrated inability and unwillingness of the Government to advance accountability at the national level, it is time for international action