Archives

Priorities in peace-making

Some vital insights into the process of bringing peace to Sri Lanka were highlighted by us yesterday when we frontaged an interview with John Hume, Nobel Peace Prize winner and leader of Britain's Social Democratic and Labour Party, who featured prominently in the making of Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement - a cornerstone to peace in the hitherto troubled province.

There are considerable differences between the Northern Ireland and Lankan situations, but some principles in peace-making can be safely transplanted from the Northern Ireland experience to the conflict here.

One, is the need for a broad commitment by the leadership of all parties to the Lankan conflict that the problem cannot be resolved by violent means. There is much merit in Hume's position that these leaders must make a declaration to the effect that violence has no role in efforts to end the conflict.

Such a declaration is of principal importance at this juncture when a bilateral ceasefire agreement is being licked into shape with Norwegian facilitation. A ceasefire plays an important role in conflict resolution but it is vital that the parties to the conflict look beyond a ceasing of fire to a permanent end to hostilities.

A cessation of hostilities takes the peace process, involving the downing of arms, to a qualitatively higher stage when the antagonists to the conflict would desist from committing all hostile acts against each other. In thus advancing the peace process, a general agreement among the parties, to desist from violence would prove vital.

Among other things, such a declaration would create the appropriate moral climate to persist with the peace process. The absence of violence would help in reducing animosities and bring moral pressure to bear on the parties to the conflict to negotiate in earnest.

Hume was also right in emphasizing that dialogue at the popular level and interest in peace on the part of the people, should come to the fore in the peace process. "The last word should be with the people, but not with the politicians," he was quoted saying.

A popular campaign for peace is, indeed, the need of the hour. It is such activism on the part of the people that compels, both governments and militants, to work earnestly towards peace.

However, it is up to the State to educate or conscientize the people on the important issues in the conflict and to stir within them the desire for a just, negotiated end to the conflict. It is vital that the Government does this without further delay because some hardline communal groups in the South are already shouting themselves hoarse from public platforms on the basis of misleading allegations.

Such misinformation campaigns should be defeated by the State through well thought-out public education programs.

• Editorial of  The Observer - Propaganda cease-fire 07.02.2002:
  

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager