Challenges in building a Sri Lankan brand

Address by Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe at the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) Brand Excellence Awards 2009 in Battaramulla last week.

We face a number of important challenges in the present era. Having overcome the threat of terrorism and achieving military mastery over a ruthless organization which has blighted our national life for nearly three decades, we have a unique opportunity to forge a new Sri Lanka in which all citizens’ human dignity is fully safeguarded, where all are treated equally and share a common cohesive identity.

This new Sri Lanka will celebrate our rich diversity and multi-faceted social make-up. Our multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-lingual society is the source of strength and we must come to view it as such.

These precepts must not remain confined to words but must be made a reality. This is perhaps our biggest challenge in the post-conflict phase.

Just as marketers live by the four “P”s that comprise the marketing mix, our Government has a comprehensive program to ensure recovery from the conflict and set us on the road to renewal, development and a brighter future for all Sri Lankans. I characterize this program as encompassing the five “R”s. They are relief, reconstruction, resettlement, reconciliation and reintegration.

There are several underlying issues that must be addressed if we are to ensure that the five “R”s are successfully accomplished. The primary requirement to ensure that this program continues smoothly, is the guaranteeing of security of people in the conflict affected areas as well as in other parts of the country.

To further buttress and support this process and also to sustain the program through the inevitable difficulties that we will encounter going forward, we need to build the Sri Lankan brand to achieve several key objectives. Image building is as important to support national renewal as any component of the Government’s program.

Building Sri Lanka’s image will help us in many ways. It will make Sri Lanka an attractive destination for tourists, investors and will also help draw in the vast pool of human and capital resources that is available among the Sri Lankan expatriate community. Raising our national profile will also help us immensely in our interactions with the global community of nations.

Marketers will play a key role in this initiative and it is incumbent on the Government to bring together all Sri Lanka’s key stakeholders including the public sector, private sector, professionals and civil society with a view to build synergies and maximize their contribution to this effort.

All of this should not be a purely cosmetic exercise. We need to work hard to remedy several problems that have afflicted our nation for several years. Poverty, under-development and building mutual trust amongst the constituent parts of Sri Lankan society, are key issues that must be addressed under the program.

This is why poverty alleviation and development is high on the agenda of the Government. We are acutely conscious that services and facilities must be provided to all areas without any area being left under-serviced. Unfortunately the presence of the LTTE in some areas of the North and East meant that the Government of the day was unable to develop those areas in the same manner as it did in the rest of the country.

This situation is now being addressed through the Government’s programs called Negenahira Navodaya and Uthuru Wasanthaya. Equally important is reconciliation which will require an effort in social marketing on a grand scale.

Years of alienation of communities, exacerbated by the conflict, must be resolved and reversed and this is what President Mahinda Rajapaksa is giving leadership through his initiative to begin a political process bringing in key political parties to evolve consensual solutions acceptable to the entirety of Sri Lanka.

This process will deal with issues of political empowerment and will enable the genuine and legitimate grievances of people in the conflict affected areas to be addressed through home-grown solutions. Your profession can play an important catalytic role in fostering, promoting and supporting reconciliation.

It will also contribute to the internal marketing component necessary in brand building. The Sri Lankan Brand that we build must signify that our country and its products and services will be the outcome of a stable democratic polity based on sound economic fundamentals supported by social equity. The speedy restoration of democratic institutions to represent and serve the people of the North is a key aspect of the process of democratization and we have already taken a first step in re-establishing these institutions in that region.

In working towards this new Sri Lanka, therefore, we must also pay due attention to key governance issues and ensure that law and order is maintained, the rule of law is upheld and universal human rights are protected.

This is why my Ministry has assumed the responsibility of drafting a National Action Plan for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. The National Action Plan will be a nationally driven, nationally formulated and nationally owned and implemented strategy.

Humanitarian operation

The plan will be comprehensive in scope dealing with civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights. It will also focus on specific areas such as torture, women, children, migrant workers’ rights, labour rights and the rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs).

This last category is perhaps the area that has captured the imagination of many both at home and abroad in the recent past. The end of the humanitarian operation saw the liberation of nearly 280,000 persons - the vast majority of whom were brought to the Menik Farm area in Chettikulam near Vavuniya.

These persons are the main focus of the Government’s five ‘R’ program. The provision of relief has been undertaken by the Government, complemented by international agencies, international and local NGOs and also our bilateral friends.

We have worked to decongest the welfare centres and to improve the facilities provided including health, water and sanitation and ancillary services. To offset the risk of

flooding during the oncoming monsoonal rains, we constructed a network of drains with the support of UN agencies. One issue that has been repeatedly canvassed was IDPs freedom of movement.

The Government has consistently maintained that IDPs will be screened and released in a structured and well-managed manner. We are hopeful of achieving our target of resettling a majority of IDPs by January 31 next year.

Resettlement process

This is just the beginning of the resettlement process which goes hand in hand with the reconstruction process. Security is a key factor and this means ensuring that no one is allowed to destabilize the efforts to restore normality and ensure rapid economic development.

The Armed Forces and police are ever vigilant to prevent any such occurrence and deserve our wholehearted gratitude. Personal security and physical safety of the returnees is also very important.

This is why a massive de-mining effort is under way. The Mannar ricebowl was the focus of great attention and has been almost completely demined and we are confident that returnees can commence paddy cultivation during the upcoming Maha season.

The transition from conflict to peace cannot be complete without initiating development as an integral part of the reconstruction process. Enabling persons to recommence their livelihoods and not rely on humanitarian relief is critical.

The infrastructure is being constructed to facilitate this under the ambit of the reconstruction effort. Progress from humanitarian relief to self-reliance and development has not received the attention of policymakers for a long time and is just becoming a focal issue on the global agenda. Sri Lanka has the opportunity to become a positive case study and our attention must be paid to a seamless transition to development which will, in turn, pave the way for the restoration of normality.

Government’s program

I have already touched on the relief, reconstruction, reconciliation and resettlement components of the Government’s program and will now briefly allude to the last critical main component which is reintegration. This is perhaps one of the most important initiatives to ensure sustainable recovery in the post conflict era, are the efforts of the Government for the reintegration of excombatants.

Our responsibility is to rehabilitate and reintegrate around 10,000 persons - male and female including child combatants - who are being accommodated in rehabilitation centres. These ex-combatants, once they have undergone rehabilitation, must receive our continued attention.

The reintegration of ex-combatants into civilian life to complement the attempts at normalization and reconciliation launched by the President, is the final part of an integrated strategy that our Government has put into action.

National framework

In support of this initiative we have, after wide-ranging consultation, recently completed a national framework proposal and action plan on the reintegration of ex-combatants into civilian life.

The framework 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.

I must point out one more aspect that has to be addressed which is the deliberate attempts to tarnish Sri Lanka’s image abroad.

This is an external challenge to building Sri Lanka’s brand. These efforts reached a crescendo towards the end of the humanitarian operations and sporadically emanate from time to time.

The elements who fabricate and spread their misinformation have a long reach. They are able to reach policymakers, politicians, international media outlets and international institutions who, sometimes, uncritically and indiscriminately, accept their stories as true. It is the disaffected few, mainly some expatriate Sri Lankans who are largely responsible for the spread of these untruths. Some of them have links with and financial support from the LTTE’s vast international network which is slowly being identified and neutralized.

We have taken these elements on and defended ourselves on the international plane with some success.

The decisive win in May at the Human Rights Council, thus preventing a possible war crimes probe, the Channel 4 incident where we were able to prove scientifically that the video was fabricated and false, the four doctors from the Vanni who admitted that they were forced by the LTTE to lie to the world about human rights violations and the attempt by some to use the US State Department report to Congress to revitalize an international probe on the conduct of humanitarian operations were all thwarted by proactive steps taken by the Government of President Rajapaksa.

Similar challenges

We will continue in this proactive manner to meet similar challenges ahead, so that Sri Lanka’s good name and its international image will never be compromised ever.

I have been privileged and proud to defend my country before international forums when called upon to do so.

This is something I have been doing as far back as 1983, as a young diplomat. In marketing Sri Lanka we have to be conscious of the need to counter and win over these persons and urge them to reinvest their energies in rebuilding conflict affected areas and benefiting their fellow Sri Lankans.

As I mentioned before, these are resources that we should seek to exploit and we need to reach out to them and convince them that they can be productive partners in the new Sri Lanka we are building.