Somewhere in Sri Lanka right now, a child who survived abuse is waiting for a court date that keeps slipping further away. They cannot lobby for their own rights. They cannot explain to a judge why memories fade or why they’re too frightened to testify again. They can only wait, and hope that the adults around them will not let that wait become its own form of harm. As of January 2026, 4,289 child abuse cases remain pending before Sri Lanka’s High Courts, and that number keeps climbing. Every month of delay is a month where evidence weakens, a child’s hope quietly erodes, and the person who hurt them sleeps easily. This is not paperwork. It is a broken promise, repeated thousands of times over.
Two letters unanswered.
In September 2025, iProbono, together with a coalition of civil society organisations, wrote directly to the President, outlining the crisis and calling for urgent action. Having received no response, we wrote again in 2026, reiterating our concerns and the need for intervention. Yet, as of September 2026, no substantive response has been received. For every child whose case remains pending in the justice system, this silence carries a real cost. Delays are not merely administrative; they directly affect the safety, wellbeing and access to justice of children who depend on this very system for protection.
Taking it to the Parliament, in hope of answers.
Refusing to let this go unanswered, iProbono partnered with the Stop Child Cruelty Trust and brought the issue to Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa and MPs Jeevan Thondaman and Dilith Jayaweera. On 9 July 2026, Premadasa stood in Parliament and named this what it is, a national child protection crisis, demanding a special police unit for delayed cases, a presidential task force for children, and a stronger, independent NCPA. The same day, a petition bearing 40,000 signatures was handed over in Parliament and has since been formally recorded in the Hansard. The Leader of the Opposition also called on Members of Parliament across the political divide to add their signatures, underscoring that this is not the concern of one organisation or one group, it is a national crisis that demands a collective response.
The follow-up.
Minister of Women’s and Children’s Affairs Saroja Paulraj asked for two more weeks before responding substantively. Those two weeks came and went, and nothing substantive followed, what we received instead were statistics we already had access to, recycled back to us as though they were an answer.
Why the NCPA has to change.
The National Child Protection Authority exists to be the shield for an estimated 7 million children, yet nearly half its staff positions sit empty, video evidence units that spare a child the trauma of retelling their story reach fewer than 2% of cases nationally, and a UNICEF review scored its data systems at just 40% maturity. Behind every one of those statistics is a child who needed the system to move faster than it did, and it didn’t. An institution stretched this thin cannot be left to carry this crisis alone.
What we’re asking for. iProbono is calling for three things:
- strengthen the NCPA with the staffing, funding, and independence it needs to actually protect children;
- expedite cases involving children through a resourced, time-bound process with real accountability to Parliament; and
- embed trauma-informed approaches into every step of the justice system, so that seeking justice never becomes another wound.
This debate matters because it proves that when institutions stay silent, people who refuse to look away can still make noise loud enough to be heard. But a child does not experience a parliamentary debate as justice. They experience a courtroom, a verdict, a system that finally moved fast enough to matter. That is the only outcome that will make this moment count.
