Recovery and reconciliation in post-conflict Sri Lanka

Keynote address by Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe at the Seminar on “Winning the war to winning the peace: Post-war rebuilding of society” at Taj Samudra Hotel, Colombo last Friday. The first part appeared on Saturday.

There are four main planks of our recovery efforts. We are now in the late-response and early-recovery phase where we are now over the immediate impact of the disaster, i.e. armed conflict and terrorism.

We are now dealing with the fallout of the disaster those who were harmed and displaced. In humanitarian terms, we are currently in a care and maintenance stage. We are, contemporaneously, moving over to early recovery phase involving what you have identified in your sub-theme as “economic reconstruction” and from there to achieving longer term development objectives. Our ultimate goal is the return of IDPs to the areas in which they originally resided.

The process requires ensuring that these areas must be rendered safe, free of mines and other unexploded ordnance. The areas of return must be cleared of the vast caches of weapons that our Forces are recovering on a day-to-day basis. To facilitate this process, basic infrastructure must be put in place which will sustain the restored communities. Economic life must be restarted.

Resettlement

A return to traditional livelihoods must be enabled. Income generating activities from small and medium industry, services, agriculture and fisheries must be recommenced. If people in the conflict affected areas are to face the future with any degree of confidence, the public facilities and institutional edifices providing essential services must be available and on par with those in the rest of Sri Lanka. It is also necessary to enable and empower them to take charge of their own lives and not be continuously dependent on humanitarian assistance and relief.

These are challenges that the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has taken on and is determined to meet and overcome.

The next step is the housing and urban renewal of metropolitan centres. This will enable the second phase of recovery - resettlement. This process itself must be open and transparent.

People must be informed of the plans for their eventual return and their movement must be voluntary. To ensure this voluntariness, “go and see” visits by representative groups of IDPs are facilitated to view conditions in the areas of resettlement/return and report to their fellow IDPs.

My Ministry has with the assistance of the Sri Lankan representation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) put in place a strategy of Confidence Building and Stabilization Measures which will sustain and help the resettlement process by building capacities and confidence between and among key actors in the resettlement process - IDPs themselves, Government officials, Security Forces and host communites in locations of displacement and also in areas of return.

The first two limbs of this recover effort are being coordinated and implemented in consonance with the overarching Wadakkin Vasantham (Northern Spring) program under the purview of the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force for Resettlement MP Basil Rajapakse, Development and Security in the Northern Province. He is assisted by Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services Minister Rishad Bathiudeen.

The Wadakkin Vasantham program will bring together all focal points and agencies that have a role to play in ensuring the success of the resettlement process and creating the conditions for the rapid economic development of conflict affected areas in the medium to longer term. You point out in your background note explaining the purpose of this Seminar that proper and effective coordination of a post-conflict recovery effort is a sine qua non for rebuilding society.

Another major post-conflict challenge is the reintegration of ex-combatants into civilian life. In support of the Wadakkin Vasantham initiative and the attempts at normalization and reconciliation launched by the President, my Ministry has, after wide consultation, recently completed a national framework proposal on the reintegration of ex-combatants into civilian life. We laid the conceptual underpinnings of this exercise in 2006 within the ambit of the disaster recovery mandate of the Ministry and began work in October 2008, long before the conflict was successfully concluded.

Reintegration

The proposal takes a holistic view of reintegration which includes not only disarmament and demobilization followed by rehabilitation but also transitional justice, reinsertion and socio-economic integration.

The integration process will enable those who took part in the conflict to rebuild their lives and become productive members of society. We are in the process of formulating an action plan in keeping with the national framework in close consultation and coordination with the various Government focal points.

We expect the action plan to be finalized shortly with the active cooperation of all key Government actors, civil society and our international partners. Here again, inter-agency coordination and a commonality of approach are the hallmarks of this initiative. This outlook will, we believe, prove effective, prevent duplication and ensure that all agencies are working towards a common goal and are striving to move in one direction.

It will help build synergies among the various operational agencies who are working on disparate components of an integrated strategy.

Finally, I will briefly mention the efforts at reconciliation in conjunction with re-democratization and the search for a political solution within a democratic framework that guarantees equality of status, treatment and opportunity to each and every Sri Lankan irrespective of differences based on culture, language, religion or ethnicity.

Reconciliation

The President has given leadership to this process of national reconciliation with the involvement of all political parties and this is an initiative which, eventually, will bring us closer to achieving a durable peace of the sort I mentioned at the beginning of this address.

I would like to point out that the Government of the President has consistently taken the position that political problems would be met with a political response. As far back as October 27, 2008, President Rajapaksa told the Indian Hindu newspaper:

“I am absolutely clear that there is, and can be, no military solution to political questions. I have always maintained this. A military solution is for the terrorists; a political solution is for the people living in this country.”

In this context I would also like to recall the historic words of the President when he addressed the national legislature and the entire country soon after the triumph over the forces of terror on May 19, 2009, re-emphasizing his Government’s commitment to a locally created political solution. He said:

“At this victorious moment, it is necessary for us to state with great responsibility that we do not accept a military solution as the final solution...the responsibility that we accept after freeing the Tamil people from the LTTE is a responsibility that no Government in the history of Sri Lanka has accepted”

It is necessary that we give these [Tamil] people the freedoms that are the right of people in all other parts of the country. Similarly, it is necessary that he political solutions they need should be brought closer to them faster than any country or Government in the world would bring. However, it cannot be an imported solution. It is necessary that we find a solution that is our very own. It should be a solution acceptable to all sections of the people, he said.

Having defeated the most ruthless terrorists of the world, we now have another powerful challenge, the President said. It is the task of restoring the rights and dignity of the Tamil people destroyed by the LTTE.”

This then, is the pith and substance of the Government’s vision when it comes to the political solution that is necessary if we are to finally win the peace.

The North saw the recent establishment of two democratically elected institutions which are a bellwether for the re-enthronement of democracy in the entirety of Sri Lanka. We successfully met this challenge in the Eastern Province after the military victory in 2007. In a similar manner, the Government has committed itself to the re-establishment of democracy in the North. In the recent past, the people of conflict affected areas were subject to a separate system of police, courts and administrative structures imposed on them by the LTTE.

Good governance

They had to endure and survive enormous hardships during this era. It is vital that, in the future, we engender trust in a democratic framework and amongst the people and familiarize them with modes of popular and good governance. Elected political representatives should be entrusted with the responsibilities of working for the people and running an administration in the Northern Province.

Additionally, trust in the rule of law and structures to ensure good governance must be encouraged. Administrative agencies must be strengthened in order that the people of the North are able to attend to their needs in a manner similar to others in the rest of the country.

A functioning democratic system itself can prove a cohesive force and greatly aid reconciliation efforts. Each community will, in the course of democratic give and take, have to eschew narrow parochial thinking and make some sacrifices for the common good.

This is how the military victory gained during the humanitarian operation will be made more productive and meaningful and will be of eventual benefit to us and to future generations. It is in this manner that a stable peace in a new, unified Sri Lankan society can be won and sustained.