Sri Lanka

TRIP REPORT: SRI LANKA
Luckshmi Sivalingam
April 27, 2004

Following the Transparency and Accountability (TAG) project in Timor L’este, Democracy Council and the Tamil Refugee Relief Organization jointly sent DC’s Administrative and Financial Manager Luckshmi Sivalingam, to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.  The purpose of the mission was two fold.  The first was to assess the current situation of the island nation in light of the ongoing 2-year ceasefire between the Sri Lankan Government (SLG) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and President Kumaratunga’s unexpected dissolution of the existing government in order to hold new elections on April 2, 2004.  The second purpose of the mission was to explore potential Democracy Council projects in the development and rehabilitation sector of Sri Lanka.

From 1983 to 1994, over 65,000 lives have been lost and almost 1 million people have been displaced from their homes.  Damages to physical and social infrastructure have imposed serious economic challenges to the entire country, but particularly in those regions in the northeast that are most afflicted by the war.  In June 2003, Japan hosted the Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka, co-chaired by the United States, European Union, Japan, and Norway.  $4.5 billion was raised at the donor conference, pledged on the condition of progress in the peace process of the conflict.  On February 17, 2004, U.S. Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher stated, “The co-chairs reiterate their determination to implement their assistance pledged at the Tokyo Conference, based on the principles of the Tokyo Declaration, which makes clear that assistance by the donor community must be closely linked to substantial and parallel progress in the peace process.  In the meantime, mindful of the Tokyo Declaration, the co-chairs recognize that there are particularly urgent needs for assistance for people in the war-torn areas and throughout Sri Lanka.  The co-chairs call on all donors to continue delivering humanitarian relief and rehabilitation assistance to all needy areas of the country.”

Local individuals and members of NGOs continue to make commendable efforts to redevelop all sectors of the region with the assistance and guidance of various international NGOs.  While in Sri Lanka, I considered two potential projects. Local stakeholders remain largely ignorant of the processes involved in accessing monetary and material aid.  The grant-writing and logistics of the Western NGO world are foreign to many of these promising groups.  As a representative of Democracy Council, I explored project options in Sri Lanka involving skills transfer and capacity building for members of local NGOs and other relevant groups.  Using TAG as a rough model, I envision a series of workshops that bring together these various groups for training of grant/proposal writing, gaining access to the vast resources and monetary aid that can be made available to them, and preparing them for the anticipated flow of aid. While in Sri Lanka, I met with representatives of international and local NGOs including, but not limited to, the United Nations Development Program, United States International Development Agency, Development Alternatives Inc., German Development Association, Jaffna NGO Council, Center for Women and Development, and the Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies.  Representatives from all of the mentioned organizations agreed that there was a need for such a capacity building project, particularly in the Northern and Eastern, war-afflicted regions.   

The second project to consider would be modeled very similarly to the Palestinian Investment Fund.  The Sri Lankan Government has become a powerful, yet extremely corrupt entity.  As the presence of international and local NGOs expands and the flow of monetary aid increases, there is a dire need for a monitoring entity similar to the PIF through which all aid can be channeled to the designated NGOs in an accountable and transparent fashion.  Democracy Council can help draft and implement regulatory and governance reforms aimed at enhancing transparency and accountability.  This will greatly reduce corruption, increase efficiency of fiscal spending and the rehabilitation of war-afflicted regions, and ensure the donor community of a more transparent and reliable utilization of funds.