Today’s vote by the Human Rights Council highlights the lack of progress towards addressing Sri Lanka's culture of impunity. The resolution calls on the government to conduct an independent and credible investigation into human rights violations committed during Sri Lanka’s civil war.

"There needs to be an independent and credible international investigation into alleged violations of human rights in Sri Lanka."

Writing in The Times, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu warn that without pressure from the Human Rights Council and the Commonwealth, the human tragedies of Sri Lanka’s civil war will not be accounted for.

In a development welcomed by child marriage activists, the United States Congress has passed a bill stating that child marriage breaches fundamental human rights – and requiring the US to integrate the prevention of this harmful practice across its development programmes.

"With or without legislation, we urge the Obama administration to make eliminating child marriage a foreign policy goal."

Writing in the Washington Post, Graça Machel and Desmond Tutu say we are not doing enough to fulfil our responsibility to protect young people from early marriage, and call on the United States government to make tackling child marriage a central focus of its international development agenda.

“At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Jimmy Carter writes in the New York Times that the serious human rights violations committed by the United States are undermining his nation's moral authority in international affairs.

Writing in The Guardian as the UN Human Rights Council session opens in Geneva, Archbishop Tutu and Mary Robinson say it is not just Sri Lanka's people that the Council must serve this week, but the cause of international law.

“If we let the UN Human Rights Council fail, we leave the field free to tyrants to call the shots.”

In response to calls to abandon the UN Human Rights Council as a mechanism for protecting and promoting human rights around the world, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argues in the Christian Science Monitor that giving up on the Council would be a mistake.