Liberal Peacebuilding Policy to Recover the War Affected Community: A Study on a Selected District in the Northern Province, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Since 2009, Sri Lanka has been in a process of sustaining peace and reconciling ethnically fragmented societies. The agenda of peacebuilding and reconciliation in Sri Lanka has developed on the dominant ideology of liberal peace. The Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) designs, liberal peace policy to build up democracy and reach to development ends. The focus of liberal peace policy, thereby, turns to ‘development through peace. In the liberal sense, development deviates to the dimensions of freedom, liberty, rights, justice and equal representation and distribution. The ultimate goal of liberal peace in Sri Lanka is to construct a liberal society. The liberal society is the structure of supporting to prevail ‘truth’ and ‘just’ and to represent the grassroots. The ultimate objective of the liberal peace project is to establish a truth and just society where the grassroots can represent their needs. The question is, “Does liberal peace of Sri Lanka articulate and represent the interests of grassroots in the programs?” Does the liberal peace of the country ensure rights and freedom of grassroots? The paradox is that liberal peace recipients are at the grassroots, but they are on a passive resistance against liberal peace which has been contextualized since 2009. The research problem of the study is that, “Despite the liberal peace reforms and liberal policies have been introduced to establishing sustainable peace in Sri Lanka, why the passive resistance of the mothers of the disappeared have not been considered in such policy implementation? Two research questions have formulated to guide the problem solving; “How the disappearances happened before and after the war ended?” and “How the mothers of the disappeared have been organizing the struggle for justice of disappeared?” The study is on the qualitative data. The primary data of the research have been collected through the unstructured interviews and through focus group discussions. The 40 mothers of the disappeared at a passive resistance in Vavuniya have been selected for the interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted for gathering primary data. Library research was used to collect the secondary data of the research. The participants of the sample are Tamil women from Jaffna, Killinochchi, Mulativu and Mannar districts. The methodology of discourse analysis was utilised to analyse the testimonies of the interviewee. The mothers of the disappeared have met with the highest officials in the GOSL and international civil organisations. The meetings have not produced effective outcomes except passed and the president signed the office of Missing Persons Act (OMP). The act now has been implemented though, the mothers of the disappeared are still on the protest in Vavuniya. 35 Mothers in the sample said that their children disappeared since they handed over to the Sri Lankan army at the end of the war. Although the Office of Missing Persons Act passed and the office is yet to be set up, the mothers have no faith in the government. The respondents mentioned that the meetings with the leading government figures and the visit of the Executive President to the protesting places were not the answers to the simple question of “What happened to our children?” The key argument of the research is that in the process of contextualising the universal concept of liberal peace, it has subjected to local politics. As Arendt mentions that the blending of politics and truth in governing structure has caused to ignore the real representation of grassroots in the liberal peace.