scholarly journals Different Levels of NGO Engagement and Reactions of the Government: Assessing the Sri Lankan Experience

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indi Ruwangi Akurugoda ◽  
Patrick Barrett ◽  
Alan Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Construction Projects ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
Foreign Donor

Sri Lankan governments have a history of contradictory forms of engagement with NGOs and foreign donors, on the one hand embracing opportunities to work with and coordinate NGO donations for development, and on the other discouraging and rejecting more localised NGO activities. Successive governments have welcomed NGO and foreign donor funds for large scale construction projects. At the same time, with the support of Sinhala nationalist groups, governments have also portrayed NGOs and foreign donors as imperial agents. This criticism has been used against NGOs involved in the promotion and protection of human rights, especially in the war affected areas. This inconsistent behaviour of governments towards NGOs and foreign donors reflects opportunistic politics. Some NGOs and foreign donor agencies have successfully managed to navigate these contradictory government positions. Based on research in the southern and eastern provinces in Sri Lanka, this paper analyses effective NGO engagement at the local level during the post-tsunami and post-war situations. It focuses on those NGOs that have maintained government backing while also positively supporting local governance, community development and human rights.

scholarly journals Ethnic Conflict, War Crimes and Human Rights: Revisiting U.S Sponsored UNHRC Resolution against Sri Lanka in 2013

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 126-139
Author(s):  
S.M. Aliff
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Local Ngo ◽  
External Intervention

The civil war ended in 2009 but four years later the country has yet to find its path of reconciliation and to heal the wounds of war. At the present time it also appears that Sri Lanka is moving backwards, and not forwards, in terms of securing the rule of law and reconciliation. This has impacted negatively on the rule of law and by extension the protection of human rights and political accountability. There is also the rise of inter-religious tensions fanned by government allies. A new dimension of inter-communal unrest is the rise of Buddhist extremism in some quarters; it has targeted the Muslim community and taken on an open and frontal confrontational approach. One of the main elements of external intervention in the internal affairs of post-war Sri Lanka is the continuing pressure being brought to bear on the government to adopt a system of province-based devolution as one of the instrumentalities of ethnic reconciliation. It is, indeed, unfortunate that the LLRC itself has made a similar prescription. There is no evidence in the voluminous report produced by the Commission that it made any attempt to draw ‘lessons’ relevant to the subject of territorial devolution and sub-national inter-group conflict from our own experiences, leave alone the abundance of international experiences. Its recommendation, however, has had the effect of legitimizing the demand made by the global west which, in earlier times, was so obviously based on a nakedly superficial, local NGO-nurtured, understanding of Sri Lankan affairs.

People’s Movement in Odisha: An Assessment

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283
Author(s):  
Subhendu Ranjan Raj
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The State ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Growth Strategies ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up

Development process in Odisha (before 2011 Orissa) may have led to progress but has also resulted in large-scale dispossession of land, homesteads, forests and also denial of livelihood and human rights. In Odisha as the requirements of development increase, the arena of contestation between the state/corporate entities and the people has correspondingly multiplied because the paradigm of contemporary model of growth is not sustainable and leads to irreparable ecological/environmental costs. It has engendered many people’s movements. Struggles in rural Odisha have increasingly focused on proactively stopping of projects, mining, forcible land, forest and water acquisition fallouts from government/corporate sector. Contemporaneously, such people’s movements are happening in Kashipur, Kalinga Nagar, Jagatsinghpur, Lanjigarh, etc. They have not gained much success in achieving their objectives. However, the people’s movement of Baliapal in Odisha is acknowledged as a success. It stopped the central and state governments from bulldozing resistance to set up a National Missile Testing Range in an agriculturally rich area in the mid-1980s by displacing some lakhs of people of their land, homesteads, agricultural production, forests and entitlements. A sustained struggle for 12 years against the state by using Gandhian methods of peaceful civil disobedience movement ultimately won and the government was forced to abandon its project. As uneven growth strategies sharpen, the threats to people’s human rights, natural resources, ecology and subsistence are deepening. Peaceful and non-violent protest movements like Baliapal may be emulated in the years ahead.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Contact Tracing

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Teresa Scassa
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Local Public Health ◽  
Health Initiatives ◽  
Rights Issues

This article surveys the rise of contact tracing technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the privacy, ethical, and human rights issues they raise. It examines the relationship of these technologies to local public health initiatives, and how the privacy debate over these apps made the technology in some cases less responsive to public health agency needs. The article suggests that as countries enter the return to normal phase, the more important and more invasive contact tracing and disease surveillance technologies will be deployed at the local level in the context of employment, transit, retail services, and other activities. The smart city may be co-opted for COVID-19 surveillance, and individuals will experience tracking and monitoring as they go to work, shop, dine, and commute. The author questions whether the attention given to national contact tracing apps has overshadowed more local contexts where privacy, ethical, and human rights issues remain deeply important but relatively unexamined. This raises issues for city local governance and urban e-planning.

scholarly journals THE STATE'S RESPONSIBILITY IN THE WELFARE OF PEOPLE AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY IN THE FACE OF COVID-19 FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

1970 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Serlika Aprita ◽  
Lilies Anisah
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Problem Solver ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Impact

The Covid-19 pandemic was taking place in almost all countries around the world. Along with the increasingly vigorous government strategy in tackling the spread of the corona virus that was still endemic until now, the government had started to enforce the Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) with the signing of Government Regulation (PP) No. 21 of 2020 about PSBB which was considered able to accelerate countermeasures while preventing the spread of corona that was increasingly widespread in Indonesia. The research method used was normative prescriptive. The government put forward the principle of the state as a problem solver. The government minimized the use of region errors as legitimacy to decentralization. The government should facilitated regional best practices in handling the pandemic. Thus, the pandemic can be handled more effectively. The consideration, the region had special needs which were not always accommodated in national policies. The government policy should be able to encourage the birth of regional innovations in handling the pandemic as a form of fulfilling human rights in the field of health. Innovation was useful in getting around the limitations and differences in the context of each region. In principle, decentralization required positive incentives, not penalties. Therefore, incentive-based central policies were more awaited in handling and minimizing the impact of the pandemic.    

scholarly journals Post-War Religious Violence, Counter-State Response and Religious Harmony in Sri Lanka

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-223
Author(s):  
Mohammad Agus Yusoff ◽  
Athambawa Sarjoon
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
State Response ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War

Abstract Sri Lankan military forces and government authorities have succeeded to counter measure terrorism by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, their initiatives and efforts to restore peace and harmony among different ethno-religious groups in the post-war context are highly complex. The additional space given to the reemergence of radical religious groups has negatively influenced the process of fostering religious tolerance and harmony, which have been maintained for centuries in the country. Ethno-religious minorities became the major targets of religious hatred and violent attacks. At both the societal and political platforms, majoritarian religious sentiments and discourse have established a dominant presence in opposing the existence and practice of the religious fundamentals of minorities. This study has attempted to investigate the nature and impact of majoritarian religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as the efforts made by the government authorities to control them in order to foster religious tolerance and harmony in the country. This study argues that religious violence under the shadow of religious nationalism has been promoted by many forces as a mechanism by which to consolidate a majoritarian ethno-religious hegemony in the absence of competing ethnic-groups context in post-war Sri Lanka. In many ways, state apparatuses have failed to control religious violence, maintain religious tolerance and inter-religious harmony, particularly of accommodating minorities in nature. The study concludes that the continuous promotion of majoritarian religious hegemony through anti-minority religious hatred and violence would further promote religious intolerance and radicalism challenging the establishment of religious harmony in the country.

scholarly journals THE TORTUOUS PATH OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO ENSURE POST-WAR RECONCILIATION—THE CASE OF SRI LANKA

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Jehan Perera
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Counter Measures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Resources ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Main Engine ◽  
Horizontal Inequalities

For the past three decades Sri Lanka was stalemated between governments that were not prepared to devolve power to the Tamil majority provinces and a Tamil militant movement that wanted a separate country. In February 2002, the Sri Lankan government and LTTE signed a ceasefire agreement under Norwegian government auspices that appeared to offer the real prospect of a final end to violence as a means of conflict resolution. The ceasefire between the government and the LTTE held for nearly four years despite significant problems affecting the peace process, problems that led to the LTTE’s withdrawal from the peace talks. However, the ceasefire collapsed in early 2006 with a series of ambushes of government soldiers by the LTTE, eventually leading to counter measures and counter attacks by the forces of the government, measures in which the government wrested back control of territory placed under the control of the LTTE by the terms agreed upon by the Ceasefire Agreement. Today Sri Lanka is a country that continues to be deeply divided on lines of ethnicity, religion and politics. Horizontal inequalities, defined as severe inequalities in economic and political resources between culturally defined groups, were undoubtedly a contributing factor for the perpetuation of Sri Lanka’s long-running conflict. No sooner it won the war, the government asserted economic development to be the main engine of reconciliation.

scholarly journals The right to comfort in the century of the self

2021 ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Zara Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

After the war, the world was divided between two main powers, a Western capitalist bloc led by the USA, and an Eastern communist bloc, driven by the USSR. From Japan to Mexico, the post-war years were ones of prosperous economic growth and profound social transformation. It was the time of re-housing families split apart and of rebuilding destroyed cities, but it was also the time of democratic rebirth, the definition of individual and collective freedoms and rights, and of belief in the open society envisaged by Karl Popper. Simultaneously, it was the time of the biggest migrations from the countryside, revealing a large faith in the city, and of baby booms, revealing a new hope in humanity. (...) Whether through welfare state systems, as mainly evidenced in Western Europe, under the prospects launched by the Plan Marshall (1947), or through the establishment of local housing authorities funded or semi-funded by the government, or through the support of private companies, civil organizations or associations, the time had come for the large-scale application of the principles of modern architecture and engineering developed before the war. From the Spanish polígonos residenciales to the German großsiedlungen, ambitious housing programs were established in order to improve the citizens’ living conditions and health standards, as an answer to the housing shortage, and as a symbol of a new egalitarian society: comfort would no longer only be found in bourgeois houses.

scholarly journals Limits in Times of Crisis: on Limitations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the Slovenian Constitutional Order

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-31
Author(s):  
Samo Bardutzky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Personal Liberty ◽  
Fundamental Freedoms ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government

The purpose of this article is to discuss the issue of limitations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the 1991 Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia. The discussion is set in the context of a large-scale health crisis, i. e. the SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and COVID-19 (the disease) epidemic. The article first describes the position of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Slovenian constitutional order, and discusses the possibilities to limit human rights and fundamental freedoms. In this section, the article introduces the concept of ‘limitations on limitations’ (similar to the German Schranken-Schranken) and presents the requirements of such limitations in Slovenian constitutional law. It then turns to the mechanism of temporary suspension and restriction of human rights and fundamental freedoms during a war or state of emergency as foreseen in Article 16 of the Constitution. In the third part, the article discusses the limitations of human rights and fundamental freedoms enacted brought forward by the government measures intended to tackle the epidemic, i.e. the concrete substatutory norms passed between March and October 2020. This article presents selected issues and affected human rights such as freedom of movement, personal liberty, right to health, and freedom of assembly. The final part of the article discusses the concept of ‘limitations on limitations’ that has demonstrated its relevance for the protection of a meaningful level of human rights in the period of the epidemiological crisis.

scholarly journals Co-Management of Small-Scale Fisheries in Chile From a Network Governance Perspective

Environments ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Cristian Albornoz ◽  
Johannes Glückler
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Network Governance ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Small Scale Fisheries ◽  
Public Subsidies ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Shared Authority ◽  
The Government ◽  
Benthic Resources

We examine decision-making, shared authority, and pluralism as key characteristics for the effective co-management of natural resources. Drawing on the concept of network governance, we complement this approach by studying localized practices of governance that support existing and compensate for missing aspects in the regulation. The regime of territorial use rights for fisheries (TURF) in Chile is a recognized example of large-scale co-management that has given rise to local organizations that manage and exploit benthic resources. Based on multi-sited qualitative fieldwork across five regions, we analyze practices with respect to two governance objects: the deterrence of illegal fishing and the periodic assessment of the fisheries’ biology fields. Our analysis shows that local fisher organizations have institutionalized informal practices of surveillance and monitoring to fill in the gaps of existing regulations. Although fisher organizations and consultants—the so-called management and exploitation areas for benthic resources (AMERB)—have managed to operate the TURF regime, they depend on the government to enforce regulations and receive public subsidies to cover the costs of delegated governance tasks. We suggest that governance effectiveness could benefit from delegating additional authority to the local level. This would enhance the supervision of productive areas and better adaptation of national co-management regulations to the specific geographical context.

scholarly journals Using Human Rights for Development: a Fiji Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mary Llewellyn-Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Development ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Development Institutions ◽  
Legal Accountability ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
The Impact

<p>Over the past decade there has been a marked shift towards human rights in the policy of multilateral development institutions, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and government donor agencies. 'Rights-based' development - in which development and poverty alleviation is viewed through a human rights lens - has become the language of choice among the international development community. As their proponents argue, rights-based approaches to development bring a degree of legal accountability to the alleviation of poverty, turning it from an act of charity to one of social justice. While this shift towards human rights is well documented at the global level, less is known about the understanding and use of human rights for development by NGOs at the local level. By focusing on a particular local context - Fiji - this research investigates how local NGOs understand and use human rights for development, and aims to identify the main challenges surrounding the use of human rights at this level. The findings from interviews with representatives of Fijian NGOs suggest that while human rights are being successfully applied to development in Fiji, they also face some challenges. Two of the most significant challenges are the politicised gap between human rights and development organisations and resistance to human rights on cultural grounds. These challenges demonstrate the impact local social, political and cultural contexts can have on the implementation of global ideas, and have numerous implications for the successful application of rights-based approaches to development at the local level.</p>

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