Untitled Document

Ensuring non-discrimination
Changes made to the Citizenship Act No 18 of 1948 (as amended), by Parliament this week, in order that a Sri Lankan mother (as well as the father), will be able to pass citizenship to the children, corrects a glaring anomaly in our law at long last.

Sections 4 and 5 of the Act (dealing with citizenship by descent) hitherto permitted the transmission of Sri Lankan citizenship only through the paternal line. These sections had been critiqued time and time again on the reasoning that they are based on archaic norms that violate modern constitutional and international standards against discrimination on the grounds of sex.

This anomaly was also subjected to critical scrutiny by the Human Rights Committee when examining Sri Lanka's country report under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) for domestic compliance with international human rights law.
The provisions of the Citizenship Act demonstrated, in fact, one specific instance where pre-constitution law was patently invalid against existing constitutional rights provisions. They remained in force however, all these years, due to the bizarre exception in Article 16(1) of the 1978 Constitution that took pre-constitution statutes out of reach of rights challenge. The amendment of the Act this week remedying this unconstitutionality is therefore welcomed.

It is interesting, in this sense, that India's citizenship laws restricting citizenship by descent to the paternal line, was amended as way back as in 1992 so that citizenship could pass through either parent. The campaign regarding change of the country's citizenship laws had been in existence for the past so many decades. Of equal historical importance is the lobbying for a specific legal mechanism providing for parity of representation in Sri Lanka's political institutions at local government, provincial and national level.

This issue is thrust periodically into the public domain when International Women's Day comes along but little that is substantive is done about it thereafter. This time around as well, we had President Chandrika Kumaratunga declaring at a commemorative party meeting on Thursday that women should account for more than fifty percent in people's representative organisations, including Parliament.

The sad truth however, is that current parliamentary representation as far as women are concerned in this country, remain below five percent. The numbers are even lower in local government and provincial councils. Sri Lanka thus has the dubious distinction of women political representation at significantly lower levels than India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in the South Asian sub-continent.

Some measures taken to correct this pathetic state of affairs, at least partly, have been abandoned along the way. This was the case with the proposals for constitutional reform (presented by the Peoples Alliance government in 1997) which contained a 25% reservation for women in nominations at the local government level. (Para. 42 of regional list, 1997 draft).

While a reservation as regards nominations was critiqued as insufficient (as opposed to specific reserved seats that would invariably bring in women as is the case in India), the measure went some way towards addressing the problem. However, this clause was withdrawn in the August 2000 Constitutional Reform Proposals tabled in Parliament due to protests made by minority (Muslim and Tamil) political parties that they would not be able to find sufficient women candidates to fill the quota.

Similarly, the United National Front, while campaigning for the 2001 elections, launched a separate women's manifesto which promised that, if returned to power, the party will implement a 25% quota for women in nomination lists in local government within the next five years. This promise, by itself, in the context of it being limited to local government, addresses only the issue of nominations and is subject to as long a period for deliberations as five years, was clearly insufficient. Nothing much, in any event, has been done in this regard since the party came into government within the past one year. Local government elections held last year did not show a significant improvement in the statistics of elected women.

Given the fact that both the Government and President Chandrika Kumaratunga has articulated public concern regarding parity of representation, what is needed now is a well thought out process by which this question could be addressed, similar perhaps to the process by which the youth quota was implemented.

The youth quota was introduced in 1990 by an amendment to the Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act no. 25 of 1990, to provide for 40% of youth candidates i.e. between 18 -35 age, in nomination lists.

The quota came about as a result of a recommendation made by the 1990 Youth Commission, set up after the JVP insurrection to examine the underlying causes for the insurrection. The Commission found that young people felt alienated from and contempt for political institutions. Making several recommendations to remedy this situation, the Commission suggested measures aimed at bringing about accountability and transparency in political institutions. It also recommended that a quota system be provided for by law so that more youth are represented in local level institutions.
The Youth Commission Report (Sessional Paper no. 1-1990) explains the rationale behind the youth quota as follows:

"…the commission is convinced that at this particular period of our history, the generation gap has so widened that youth are in fact a distinct category who require separate representation. Although they may share different political ideologies, they are substantially united in the belief that the system does not give them the opportunity to represent and act upon the views., pg.14)

This quotation could be taken wholesale and applied to the majority of women in this country, excepting of course, women from the national and regional political elite. It is therefore relevant that the intervening years since the youth quota was implemented show that while the impact of the quota has been positive for the most part, it has also been abused with sons, nephews and relatives of sitting politicians being nominated. In some cases, the young have served as proxy candidates for elders. Whatever mechanisms whereby parity of representation is achieved in Sri Lanka, thought should be given on how to avoid similar abuses in this regard as well.

As far as political representation of women is concerned, consensus has been reached among both village and city activists in this country on at least three issues. Firstly, that that the Constitution require political parties to nominate minimum 30% women as candidates in all constituencies in every election. Secondly, that all political parties be required to appoint 50% women to the National List. Thirdly, that a mechanism for the reservation of 30% selected seats for women within the framework of a Proportional.

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