By Hana Ibrahim
Over a year since the Women’s Empowerment Act became law, the National Commission for Women remains a phantom. Seven commissioners have been appointed, press releases issued, and speeches delivered. Yet it possesses no office, no staff, no budget, and no ability to help a single woman. This is not administrative delay; it is deliberate abandonment disguised as process. While politicians celebrate a paper victory, Sri Lankan women continue to face the violence, discrimination, and systemic injustice the Commission was designed to combat.
The Act promised transformative change, granting the Commission powerful tools: the authority to investigate rights violations, intervene in court, compel evidence, and make binding policy recommendations. These were concrete mechanisms designed to shift power toward women systematically excluded from justice.
But power without resources is merely rhetoric. What good is the authority to investigate complaints with nowhere to receive them? How can it intervene in court without lawyers? How does it compel evidence without staff to process it? The government’s failure to allocate even basic resources reveals the truth behind the glossy legislation: this Commission was designed as political theatre, allowing ministers to claim progress while ensuring the body remains too weak to challenge entrenched power.
This is a familiar Sri Lankan tactic. Create institutions with impressive mandates, appoint credible leaders, then strangle them through resource deprivation.
The cost of this political sabotage is not abstract; it is measured in the escalating dangers and deepening vulnerabilities faced by women across Sri Lanka. While the Commission remains a paper entity, the crises it was meant to address have intensified. Gender-based violence has reached alarming levels, with police statistics confirming sharp increases in reported domestic violence and sexual assault. Yet these official numbers represent only a fraction of the true picture, as countless survivors never come forward, silenced by social stigma, fear of retaliation, and a profound lack of faith in a justice system that has consistently failed them.
This epidemic of violence has a new, digital frontier: the Computer Crime Investigation Division documented over 600 cases of online sexual harassment in 2024 alone, a staggering 240% increase from 2021. Women politicians, journalists, and activists bear the brunt of coordinated online attacks, facing digitally manipulated content, doxxing, and threats designed to drive them from public life. In the face of these systematic campaigns, the Commission that should be their advocate is conspicuously absent.
Simultaneously, economic vulnerability has worsened. The economic crisis disproportionately impacted women, who lost jobs at higher rates than men, shouldered a greater burden of unpaid care work as social services crumbled, and confronted increased barriers to healthcare and education. Women’s workforce participation, already among the lowest in South Asia at approximately 34%, has declined further, pushing more women and their dependents into poverty.
Amidst this, structural legal discrimination remains stubbornly entrenched. Muslim women continue to be governed by personal laws that deny them equal inheritance rights. Women in the plantation sector, predominantly Tamil, labour in exploitative conditions that violate basic labour standards. Transgender women face systemic exclusion from employment, housing, healthcare, and even voting in some instances.
For those who seek justice, the path is through a hostile system where courts often blame survivors of sexual violence, and police routinely dismiss domestic abuse complaints as trivial “family matters”.
The Women’s Empowerment Act promised a powerful independent body to dismantle these very barriers. Instead, women are left with nothing but the echo of empty promises.
A government timeline suggests the Commission might be ‘established’ by December 2025 and ‘fully operational’ by 2026. That is two full years from the Act coming into force until it can help women.
Two years. 730 days.
How many women will be assaulted while waiting for office space? How many will lose jobs due to pregnancy discrimination? How many survivors will be denied justice because the investigating body doesn’t exist?
The government’s excuses are hollow. Appointing an Executive Director and recruiting staff are routine administrative functions. New ministries get staffed within months; presidential task forces materialize overnight. When political will exists, bureaucracy moves swiftly. The difference is priority. This government has calculated that women’s suffering is less urgent than other political objectives.
This is not an isolated failure but part of a clear pattern.
The 25% quota for women in local government was heralded as revolutionary. Yet women elected under this quota are systematically marginalized within councils, receiving little capacity building or protection, often serving as tokens.
Sri Lanka’s international commitments on gender equality, like CEDAW, remain largely unimplemented. Politicians sign declarations and action plans, then ignore them once international attention fades.
The pattern is clear: grand legislative gestures cost nothing and generate positive headlines. Actual implementation, with budgets and power to challenge hierarchies, threatens too many vested interests.
What Must Happen Now.
Concrete, non-negotiable actions are required to end this charade. The government must demonstrate its commitment not through speeches but through immediate resource allocation, approving an operational budget, securing office space, and authorizing staff recruitment within the next month, not the next year.
This is a test of political will, not technical capacity. To ensure its autonomy, the Commission’s funding must be a direct parliamentary allocation, insulating it from the political interference that would inevitably come from ministry control. Furthermore, this operational capacity must be established nationwide from the outset; a gradual, Colombo-centric rollout would merely institutionalize the existing delay of justice for women in rural and remote districts.
And, to rebuild shattered trust, Parliament must mandate rigorous public accountability, requiring the Commission to publish quarterly reports detailing its operations, complaints received, investigations conducted, and outcomes achieved.
Beyond government action, civil society and citizens must refuse to accept performative gestures. We must demand not just the establishment of institutions but their effective operation. Women’s rights are not political bargaining chips but fundamental entitlements.
If this Commission remains dysfunctional, it confirms to Sri Lankan women that their rights are merely rhetorical, that government promises are worthless, and that change is impossible. This breeds the cynicism that corrodes democracy. Why should women engage politically when the institutions meant to protect them are deliberately kept powerless?
The seven commissioners appointed are accomplished professionals who presumably believed they could make a difference. They deserve better than a phantom institution. Sri Lankan women deserve better than symbolic gestures masquerading as rights protection.
-ENCL
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