During his mission from January 31 to February 2, Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, will visit detention facilities and meet government officials, the UN human rights office said in a statement.
Nowak, an Austrian legal expert, is also scheduling meetings in the country with parliamentarians, judges, representatives of non-governmental organisations, and Sri Lanka's Human Rights Commission, it added.
He will submit a report on his findings to the UN's top human rights assembly, the Human Rights Council.
Sri Lanka is locked in Asia's bloodiest separatist conflict, between Tamil Tiger rebels and the government, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006