Why It's So Hard to Talk About Peace in Sri Lanka

 

Tuesday, 09 September 2014 

Tuesday, 09 September 2014

Mr Gilberto Algar-Faria, Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney and PhD Candidate at the University of Bristol

Co-presented with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Sydney Peace Foundation

The Australian Government’s recent declarations about Sri Lanka’s “boat people” and, by extension Sri Lanka itself, have brought important questions about rights, justice and peace to the fore. It is becoming common to hear that, since the end of its war in 2009, Sri Lanka has been in a post-war situation but not a post-conflict one. Plenty of focus has been lent to the conduct of the war itself, especially the final stages which are currently subject to an external investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Council. The war was a bloody one, between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (“Tamil Tigers”), lasting almost three decades. It is unique insofar as the Government achieved a military solution to a war with an insurgent organisation.

Much to the Government’s frustration, it is what happened in the last five months of the war (from January to May 2009) that interests the UNHRC. The Government frequently complains that the UN forgets about the rest of the war, which was largely ignored by the outside actors. However, one might point to an additional factor that goes unnoticed: the nature of this post-war scenario mentioned earlier. The post-2009 context has seen a significant evolution of the conflict in Sri Lanka, and the recent proclamations about “peace” by the Australian Government have served to gloss over these.

In light of this, building on first-hand recent experience of the context, this lecture will open a debate about the rights of Sri Lankan asylum seekers attempting to escape to Australia as part of a wider discussion about spaces for peace and conflict in Sri Lanka today.

Gilberto Algar-Faria is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. He holds BA and MSc degrees from the University of Leeds and Durham University respectively, and is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Bristol. Gilberto has completed three rounds of fieldwork in Sri Lanka, the most recent of which he returned from in July 2014. He has previously consulted for peacebuilding NGOs, in particular for the purposes of strategic conflict analysis and conflict mapping. Gilberto is a Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Centre and the author of a number of policy briefings related to issues with sovereignty issues and conflict. Additionally, he is a Country of Origin Information Expert for the Fahamu Refugee Programme, advising primarily on Sri Lankan asylum seekers’ legal cases. Gilberto has an upcoming book chapter, ‘Terrorism and Ethics’, in the edited volume Terrorism and Political Violence (forthcoming 2015)

Chaired by Professor Stuart Rees, Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney and Founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation. Stuart has been a social worker with Save the Children in India and Sri Lanka.

Discussants
Dr Wendy Lambourne is Senior Lecturer, Academic Coordinator and Deputy Director, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney. Her research is concerned with analysing and evaluating transitional justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding after mass violence, with a regional focus on Africa and Asia/Pacific.

Dr Leticia Anderson is a Lecturer at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and is currently the Centre’s Postgraduate Coursework Coordinator and the Director of the Masters of Peace and Conflict Studies degree. Her research interests include combating Islamophobia, racism and the news media, the role of religion in conflict and peacemaking, and peace education.

Courtesy - http://whatson.sydney.edu.au