Jo Baker, 24 November 2011
Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission has no mention of gender in its mandate and no dedicated expertise related to women; it has just one female commissioner out of eight. For Tamil women, the LLRC simply reaffirms bad old habits.
About the author
Jo Baker is an independent researcher and writer, with a focus on social exclusion, conflict and gender; her legal study on discrimination and truth-telling in Sri Lanka features in December’s issue of the Law and Society Trust Review.
If and when Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) releases its report later this month, as scheduled, it will do so amid wide scepticism on many critical fronts – except, it seems, for one. The credibility, independence and the ethnic balance of the post-war commission have been well-challenged internationally, since it was established by the President last year to ostensibly help reconcile the nation. But for the war’s tens of thousands of female survivors there has been little space and little said, by either the commission or its critics. The LLRC’s weaknesses in this area deserve greater attention. They also add significantly to the impression of an instrument trailing far behind modern truth and reconciliation efforts elsewhere.[1] More