A/HRC/40/23 Court on 14 December, restrained the functioning of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. On 13 December, the Supreme Court decided that Presidential Gazette No. 2096/70 that dissolved the parliament was ultra vires and unconstitutional. On 15 December, Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned, and on 16 December Ranil Wickremesinghe was once again sworn in as Prime Minister. 13. The High Commissioner joins the Secretary-General in welcoming the resolution of the political crisis in Sri Lanka through peaceful, constitutional means, and applauds the resilience of the country’s democratic institutions. Nonetheless, for seven weeks, the legitimacy and the legality of a number of authorities were in question, which led to further delays in the implementation of the recommendations made in Human Rights Council resolution 30/1, for instance owing to staff changes in key institutions and uncertainty with regard to reporting lines. B. Developments in transitional justice 14. In Human Rights Council resolution 30/1, the Council encouraged the Government of Sri Lanka to implement a transitional process, which would entail the establishment of a judicial accountability mechanism, truth-seeking initiatives, including a truth commission, and an office on missing persons, a reparations programme and institutional reforms. 15. In the most recent report on the implementation of Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 submitted to the Council in February 2018 (A/HRC/37/23), the High Commissioner noted that, while the institutional architecture had been incipiently established to take the transitional justice process forward, concrete results were yet to come. As at December 2018, this remained the case. Although steps have been taken in institution-building (such as adoption of legislation, the recruitment and training of staff and the identification of office space) since 2017, they have yet to produce concrete benefits for individual rights holders (in the form of, for instance, the identification of missing persons, the provision of reparations and the issuance of court verdicts). Such slow progress in establishing meaningful transitional justice measures has engendered mistrust among victims and other stakeholders. 16. The political crisis at the end of 2018 further obstructed progress owing not only to the temporary paralysis of institutions but also because it generated fears that another Government might not embrace the reconciliation agenda. There were also concerns among key stakeholders that a return to power of the pre-2015 administration could have negative implications for their security and the human rights situation in general. In particular, during the crisis, the work of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms 4 – the body mandated to lead and coordinate transitional justice efforts – was hampered, given that its Secretary-General had resigned on 30 October and a number of its staff contracts were terminated on 30 November. Some staff members were reportedly subjected to surveillance and threats within hours of the removal of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe. The SecretaryGeneral and staff resumed their work in late December. 17. The High Commissioner acknowledges the efforts made to establish bodies like the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms and the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, and applauds the commitment and professionalism of their staff. The Government has, however, lagged in the actual implementation of its commitments, beyond the establishment of coordinating bodies. The situation has been compounded by the lack of a comprehensive strategy or action plan setting out a timeline for the establishment of the various transitional justice mechanisms and the linkages between them. 18. The current mandate of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms, which continues through March 2020, plays a key role in the coordination of initiatives and supporting the design of the processes and communications used in transitional justice and reconciliation. 4 4 See www.scrm.gov.lk.