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Women in Terror and Women in Peace (Part IV)

Admin March 26, 2021

Dhanushka Silva  Social institutions continue to be largely male-dominated and patriarchal. Hence, social responses regarding female participation in certain issue areas and instances have been discouraging. Interestingly, men, as well as women, have at times discouraged females from voicing

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Women in Terror and Women in Peace (Part III)

Admin March 26, 2021

Dhanushka Silva While peace negotiations were taking place in Sri Lanka during the war, civil society adopted a different approach to ensure that their concerns were on the table and reached affected communities at the grassroots level. The Suriya Women’s Development Centre (Batticaloa); Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum (Kalmunai and Colombo), and Sarvodaya were

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Women in Terror and Women in Peace (Part II)

Admin March 26, 2021

Dhanushka Silva On the topics of sex work as a result of the impacts of war, there was disturbing evidence of a village in the ‘Madhu’ area which was infamously noted for sex work which resulted from the lack of male family members or incomes, which simply meant that there were no other means of […]

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Continuing the cycle of hate

Admin March 26, 2021

Neville Uditha Weerasinghe Until the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009, the Tamil population in the country were the ‘other’ or the enemy, a notion created by the Sinhala extremists within the Sinhalese society. However, with the end of the long-drawn conflict, the Sinhala extremists no longer could point at this group of […]

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Women in Terror and Women in Peace (Part I)

Admin March 19, 2021

Dhanushka Silva “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” William Ross Wallace For many Sri Lankans like me, this proverb is not merely metaphorical. It is very much a materiality as Sri Lankan history evinces evidence of women playing an instrumental role in different aspects of social life. There […]

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Would we let the next generation embrace a gloomy future?

Admin March 19, 2021

Naveen Silva The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, once said, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” As Sri Lankans, we have experienced fear when […]

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The Role of Peace Journalism

Admin March 19, 2021

Izzadeen Ameen If post-war peace is the end goal, reconciliation is the means to that end. Peace is not the absence of war; it is a process that needs to be nourished, sustained and cared for, just as farmers look after their crops, to avert the recurrence of war.  In a war, the enemy can […]

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Sensibility – The Need of the Hour

Admin March 18, 2021

by Elisha 1820 Sensibility is the true meaning of peace and reconciliation. A foundation stone was laid on January 11th for a monument within the premises of the Jaffna University by its Vice Chancellor Professor Sivakolundu Srisatkunarajah as a memorial to those who died during the last stages of the civil war at Mullivaikkal. Earlier, […]

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Monuments and Reconciliation

Admin March 18, 2021

M.S.M. Ayub Did the demolition of the monument to those who died in the war at the Jaffna University premises by authorities on January 8th serve the purpose of reconciliation among communities? After the destruction of the structure, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, Professor Sampath Amaratunga stated that it was a hindrance to […]

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Peace and Reconciliation

Admin March 18, 2021

Naveen Silva It has been 10+ years since the end of a 30-year armed conflict that was triggered due to ethnic tensions. However little has been achieved so far in terms of peace-building and reconciliation. This implies that the end of a long conflict itself will not lead to peace and reconciliation of a country.  […]