Sunday Times 2
ICES response
View(s):The International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) has released the following statement titled ‘ICES Continues to Contribute to National Reconciliation in Sri Lanka’.
The statement from the Board of Directors reads:
The attention of the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) has been drawn to comments on an ‘online’ site with regard to an on-going project at ICES.
In 2014, ICES initiated an important study on the continuing impact that post-war economic recovery programmes have on the five districts in the North. The study sets out to understand the impact of the state, private sector, NGO and diaspora livelihood initiatives on women in the North, especially women-headed households. So far the ICES has surveyed 4,000 households and conducted 100 interviews with women in the five districts in the North. ICES has also completed a first draft of a ‘mapping’ of livelihood programmes in the North and posted it on several GIS maps on its web site. In conducting both the quantitative and qualitative research, ICES partnered with researchers and enumerators from the North and sought to build their research capacities.
The date from the interviews is being tabulated and will be shared with key policy makers and shapers over the next year and will have important policy implications for the women in the North in particular, the women of Sri Lanka in general, and for other post-war societies. The International Development Research Center, which supports the research, has monitored its progress and communicated its satisfaction at the manner in which the research is progressing.
Other research and dialogue work on urban displacement and social inequality; gender and disability, women and politics; religious coexistence, and transitional justice, continues. New work on reconciliation, diversity and institutional reform, and on fishing communities, gender, and migration, will commence over the next few months.
The ICES team consisting of the Execuive Director, the researchers, the programme coordinators, the finance and IT staff, and the librar ians, have all contributed to making the Centre vibrant and creative. Our donors have appreciated this and this has enabled us to make important contributions to research and policy reform.
After a brief lull, ICES has re-emerged stronger, with an enhanced capacity to deliver relevant research, to use the arts to promote peaceful change, and to facilitate dialogue across diverse groups. It remains committed to its core mandate of promoting diversity in all its multiple shades, and generating ideas that inform and guide policies and institutions to promote justice, equity and peaceful coexistence.