Dealing with Lankan conflict: What UN should do

By J.S. Tissainayagam

Relatives grieve by the coffins of the aid workers from the Paris-based charity Action Against Hunger (ACF), who were found massacred in the town of Mutur on August 8, 2006

The visit to Sri Lanka of UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Sir John Holmes, is to commemorate an event his illustrious namesake in fiction, Sherlock, might well have been called upon to investigate: The killing of 17 aid workers in Mutur last year.

There is however little mystery in the deaths. On the contrary, what we have is the government managing a complex psy-ops programme to take the focus away from such deaths, and a humanitarian tragedy in the East, by projecting the picture of a new dawn inspired by economic development and elections.

The actual situation in the East borders on the desperate. On 31 July, TNA Parliamentarian S. Thangeswary said, “The SLA troopers enter into the homes of the residents and harass the women that many have complained … it has become impossible for them to stay there… On June 7 Thavamany Balasunderam … abducted from her home, was raped and murdered” (TamilNet 31/July/07).

These incidents of rape and sexual harassment are not something perpetrated in isolation. It manifests in a condition of generalised violence and abuse. Instances of abduction, disappearances and murder have been reported. What is worse, the Karuna Group is working with the military and is accused of carrying out vendettas against people who are suspected to have LTTE sympathies. With local government elections scheduled to be held soon, terror could be expected to increase.

The UN Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement says very clearly that states have a responsibility to protect IDPs: “National authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons within their jurisdiction.” Would the Under Secretary General be able to persuade the government to recognise this?

The second issue is that of NGOs – local and international – having unimpeded access to IDPs in western Batticaloa. The government has denied access to all except selected UN agencies and INGOs to the displaced in the newly resettled areas. NGOs are categorical that a number of humanitarian issues troubling the public could be prevented, or at least controlled, if humanitarian agencies are allowed free access to conflict areas. This is especially true of women’s organisations whose presence would be a source of comfort to a population facing gender-based violence.

Third is the problem of protecting humanitarian workers. According to NGO statistics, about 20 aid workers were killed in Sri Lanka in the past year. This includes the 17 ACF personnel and the two SLRC officers who were abducted and murdered. This is not only because justice should prevail and the killers apprehended and brought to trial, but that unless manifest moves are made to curb the impunity enjoyed by the security forces to act above the law, Sri Lanka will witness a gradual pullout of international NGOs through concerns of personal security.

A fourth issue is the role of development NGOs in conflict-affected areas. Recently, the government circulated a blueprint among NGOs involved in post-conflict development of the East and asked them to submit their critique and comments on it. However, much to their chagrin they were told before a meeting held on July 27, chaired by Basil Rajapaksa at the Ministry of Nation Building, that the blueprint had been already submitted to the cabinet for approval.

NGOs do not know whether the draft submitted to the cabinet was that which was circulated among them. All they know is that their input into the document was not incorporated. Mr. Rajapaksa had however said the ministry would come to them for funding and implementation once the blueprint was approved. What is the role NGOs are expected to play in rehabilitation and development in the future? Will they be implementing and funding agents only, or equal partners with the government and other organs of civil society in uplifting the star-crossed lives of the returning IDPs?

While these four issues would no doubt be in the minds of civil society activists that meet the Under Secretary General, the bigger question is the games the UN is playing in Sri Lanka. This article will give two examples to illustrate the point.

In May this year, the government decided to resettle IDPs in West Batticaloa. Despite protests by NGOs and INGOs that the area remained mined, the UNHCR did not put sufficient restraint on the government from resettling IDPs. The UN body was willing to countenance forced resettlement of IDPs when conditions were not good enough to give a certificate guaranteeing there was no risk of mines for resettlement.

D. Ranasinghe commented in The Northeastern Monthly, “International standards specify that the UN mine risk quality assurance certificate has to be issued for an area to be declared safe for people to return. Without such a certificate the UN does not deem it safe even for its staff to visit an area … International standards also specify that basic infrastructure and civil administration should be in place, as well as a return plan (with packages of food and other assistance packages) clearly specified and that humanitarian agencies should have unimpeded access to the areas.” (The Northeastern Monthly April-May 2007).

The second instance is the curious affair of the UN Emergency Recovery Officer, specially brought down for this task, working with the Ministry of Nation Building on the recovery of the East programme. This programme is avowedly political – to develop the East as part of a “hearts and minds operation” to distract the Tamil public from the political roots of the conflict and legitimise it through elections.

The confines within which the UN works as a supranational body to ensure justice, human rights and humanitarian welfare, have been compromised by implementing a political programme of the government. It is believed the government had made it known to the UN that if it was unwilling to be a partner in resettlement it could go its way. And in fear it would be marginalised in the endeavour the UNHCR had agreed to flexible.

Whatever little idealism that went into the founding of the UN, eroded in the last decade of the 20th century. We are quite aware that the UN is a conservative body apathetic to change, controlled by the powerful who wish to preserve the status quo, which favours existing states, and not peoples fighting for their rights and liberties.

But if indeed the UN is genuinely interested in ushering peace to Sri Lanka, it has to do a little better than aid and abet in implementing the government’s hearts and minds programmes or allow resettlement without mine clearance certificates, both matters the Under Secretary General would do well to look into.