The Law & Society Trust (LST) is a not for profit organisation conducting human rights documentation, research and advocacy based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Our programme areas include Civil and Political Rights; Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Human Rights in Conflict.

Our goal is to improve respect for the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights, thereby securing justice for all. We utilise awareness-raising, national, regional and international lobbying, information dissemination, human rights training and networking as strategies in our campaigns at national and regional level.

The Information and Documentation Centre at LST with over 8,000 volumes includes a rare collection of early Sri Lankan legal literature as well as contemporary materials such as the Sri Lanka Law Reports, Legislative Enactments, Hansard reports and Government Gazettes as well as Indian Law Reports, academic journals, periodicals, reports of other individual and organisations and relevant newspaper cuttings.

Since 1993 LST has published the annual Sri Lanka: State of Human Rights report scrutinising the actions of state and non-state actors and Sri Lanka’s conformity with its international obligations, which is the only such publication in Sri Lanka. There are also Sinhala and Tamil versions of the Report. LST Review (edited by Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena) has appeared without interruption since 1990 providing socio-legal analysis of contemporary issues in Sri Lanka. The twice-yearly Appellate Law Recorder (edited by Dr Jayantha Almeida Guneratne PC) reports leading decisions of the appellate courts in Sri Lanka with commentary and summaries in Sinhala and Tamil as a service to the legal community.

The Law & Society Trust is a founder-member of the Asian Forum on Human Rights and Development (Forum-Asia) and South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) and an active participant in several regional and international networks.