Who Keeps the Peace and Who Makes the Peace?How Family and Community Engagement Is Used to Strengthen Reconciliation and Transitional Justice Mechanisms in Sri Lanka

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
Laurie L. Charlés
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Transitional Justice

Grasping at Straws: Judicial Review of Legislation in Sri Lanka

ICL Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-306
Author(s):  
Danushka S Medawatte
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Provincial Councils ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIn this paper, I attempt to examine the evolution of judicial review of legislation in Sri Lanka with a view to better understanding how it has impacted the democratic fabric and constitutional matrix of Sri Lanka. The impact that judicial review of legislation has had on rights jurisprudence, enhancement of democracy, prevention of persecution against selected groups are analysed in this paper in relation to the Ceylon Constitutional Order in Council of 1946 (‘Soulbury’ Constitution) and the two autochthonous constitutions of Sri Lanka of 1972 and 1978. The first part of the paper comprises of a descriptive analysis of judicial review of legislation under the three Constitutions. This is expected to perform a gap filling function in respect of the lacuna that exists in Sri Lankan legal literature in relation to the assessment of the trends pertaining to judicial review of legislation in Sri Lanka. In the second part of the paper, I have analysed decided cases of Sri Lanka to explore how the judiciary has responded to legislative and executive power, and has given up or maintained judicial independence. In this respect, I have also attempted to explore whether the judiciary has unduly engaged in restraint thereby impeding its own independence. The third part of the paper evaluates the differences in technique and stance the judiciary has adopted when reviewing draft enactments of the national legislature and when reviewing draft or enacted statutes of Provincial Councils. From a comparative constitutional perspective, this assessment is expected to provide the background that is essential in understanding the island nation’s current constitutional discourse, transitional justice process, and its approach to human rights.

Families of the missing in Sri Lanka: Psychosocial considerations in transitional justice mechanisms

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (905) ◽  
pp. 497-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maleeka Salih ◽  
Gameela Samarasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Psychosocial Needs

AbstractIn the last thirty years, tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have experienced enforced disappearances of family members. In 2016, many members of such families came before the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms, which was mandated to gather views on how people thought the transitional justice mechanisms should be designed, how they should be established and how they should function. This process allowed the families to share their experiences and to outline what they saw as important in shaping the transitional justice mechanisms. This article surveys the complex nature of their distress and psychosocial needs, as expressed by them during the consultations. It proposes that transitional justice mechanisms should be designed to protect their psychosocial well-being, address their complex psychosocial needs, and provide them with support and protection before, during and after their engagement in the mechanisms.

scholarly journals Beyond Personal Empathy: Perceiving Inclusive Empathy as Socially Shared Predicts Support for Transitional Justice Mechanisms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Penić ◽  
Daniel Dukes ◽  
Guy Elcheroth ◽  
Sumedha Jayakody ◽  
David Sander
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Sample Survey ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Probability Sample ◽  
Post War

AbstractIn countries emerging from civil war, inclusive empathy is important for conflict resolution yet may be difficult to promote. Widening the predominant focus on personal inclusive empathy for conflict resolution, we examine whether support for transitional justice mechanisms (TJ) can be predicted by how much an individual perceives inclusive empathy as being shared in their local communities. Our results, based on a probability sample survey in post-war Sri Lanka (N = 580), reveal that the effects of this perceived communal inclusive empathy can be distinguished from those of personally experienced inclusive empathy, and that the more respondents perceive inclusive empathy as prevalent in their communities, the more they support TJ mechanisms. However, the results also indicate the contextual limits of perceived communal inclusive empathy as a resource for conflict resolution: participants tend to underestimate the prevalence of inclusive empathy, especially in militarized minority communities, and the more they underestimate it, the less they support TJ mechanisms. This study corroborates the importance of social influence in conflict resolution, suggesting that perception of inclusive empathy as shared in one’s community is a key determinant of popular support for conflict-transforming policies.

The Office on Missing Persons in Sri Lanka: The importance of a primarily humanitarian mandate

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (905) ◽  
pp. 641-662
Author(s):  
Vishakha Wijenayake
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Missing Persons

AbstractThis article attempts to situate the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) in Sri Lanka in relation to varying approaches to mechanisms for searching for the missing. In particular, the article examines the possible tensions between a humanitarian and an accountability-based mandate and supports the position of the International Committee of the Red Cross that these two approaches can in fact be complementary in nature. It goes on to contend that the OMP's mandate is primarily humanitarian rather than exclusively humanitarian, and analyzes how this distinction may impact possible criminal prosecutions. It emphasizes the importance of preserving the humanitarian character of the OMP with the objective of ensuring that the victims’ rights are at the centre of transitional justice processes.

Does individual and collective remembrance of past violence impede or foster reconciliation? From Argentina to Sri Lanka

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (910) ◽  
pp. 97-124
Author(s):  
Jill Stockwell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

AbstractWhile the dominant human rights discourse on transitional justice constitutes a mix of reinforcing aims that seek to “make peace with” a violent past, this article complicates this notion by exploring how affective memories can prevent individuals from envisioning a future for themselves in which their individual and their nation's past is safely left behind. In the context of ongoing debates over whether to remember or forget a country's traumatic past, the article will show how affective memories of violence and disappearance prevail and disrupt the reconciliation paradigm, and need to be taken into account in transitional justice processes.

scholarly journals The things they carry: Victims’ documentation of forced disappearance in Colombia and Sri Lanka

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406612094647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Cronin-Furman ◽  
Roxani Krystalli
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
State Action ◽  
Strategic Adaptation ◽  
Victim Status ◽  
Police Reports

Survivors of systematic violations of human rights abuses carry with them the evidence of their victimization: photographs of the missing, news clippings, copies of police reports. In some contexts, collecting and preserving these documents is part of an effort to claim benefits, such as official victim status or reparations, from the state. In others, it serves as a record of and rebuke to the state’s inaction. In this article, through a comparative case study of victim mobilization in Colombia and Sri Lanka, we explore how these dynamics play out in contexts with high and low (respectively) levels of state action on transitional justice. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in both contexts, we examine grassroots documentation practices with an eye toward how they reflect the strategic adaptation of international transitional justice norms to specific contexts. We also examine how they organize relationships among individuals, the state, and notions of justice in times of transition from war and dictatorship. We argue that, beyond the strategic engagement with and/or rebuke of the state, these documents are also sites of ritual and memory for those who collect them.

scholarly journals Passing on the torch of memory: Transitional justice and the transfer of diaspora identity across generations

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 360-380
Author(s):  
Camilla Orjuela
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Young People ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Critical Events ◽  
The Past

Abstract∞ The role diaspora actors play in transitional justice (TJ) has recently been recognized by practitioners and scholars. This article focuses on how TJ initiatives, by re-emphasizing, retelling or silencing traumas of the past, can play an important role for the transfer of diaspora identity and homeland engagement across generations. Based on research on the diasporas from Rwanda and Sri Lanka, the article highlights the different positions made available for and taken up by young people in TJ, and the ways the past is evoked by the homeland state, diaspora organizations and people they meet in their day-to-day lives. TJ initiatives, the article argues, can serve as critical events that mobilize the young generation to support – or resist – narratives of the past, while also providing them with experiences that add to a postmemory of the painful past of their parents’ homeland.

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