A (long term) Story of Hope after Despair in Sri Lanka, by Neil Buhne

I led the UN Country and Humanitarian Community in Sri Lanka from 2007 to 2011. Those first years, from 2007 to 2009, were a time of hope lost, frustration, cruelty, missed opportunities, cynicism, desperation and ultimately - horror.  However, the last year became a time of people coming together to reduce suffering, of communities being reconstituted and of hope. 

The last stages of the 30-year civil war in Sri Lanka began in early 2006 with two reasons for hope disappearing: the collapse of a 4-year-old ceasefire and the failure to bridge divides through the massive effort to overcome the effects of the December 2004 Tsunami. This led over the next three years to 500,000 people being displaced and tens of thousands of civilians, Sri Lankan military and LTTE cadres being killed. The LTTE prevented people under its control from fleeing to safer areas under government control and the Government limited access and assistance to displaced and affected populations and, especially in the last months of the war, did not differentiate between civilians and combatants in rapidly diminishing areas controlled by the LTTE. Though the UN, the ICRC, Norway, the United States, and India and range of other countries and NGOS all undertook individual or collective actions to stop the fighting and provide humanitarian assistance, in the end all these efforts failed as the LTTE leadership was unwilling to negotiate a settlement, and the Government when they saw a final victory in sight, was unwilling to stop the military operation despite its huge human costs.

The approximately 300,000 Tamil civilians “trapped” by the last stages of fighting, were failed by the international community, the Sri Lanka Government, and their own leadership in the LTTE.   At the end of such a long and brutal war, the feeling of these 300,000 people was one of hopelessness.  While many in the ethnic Sinhala majority celebrated the victory, others, especially in poor communities, mourned the deaths of tens of thousands of their family members who died during the war. 

The hopelessness of the displaced Tamil civilians was made ever worse, when the President and senior leaders within the Government talked of needing 2-3 years to “cleanup” the areas formally controlled by the LTTE and wanting to create long term “relief villages” where 300,000 displaced people would stay.

Personally, as the in-country leader of the UN team and the humanitarian community, I was deeply discouraged by our own (and my own) inability to do more to stop the fighting, to help more people and by the immediate post-war triumphalism of the Government and large sections of society amplified by a resolution at the Human Rights Council praising the Government.  I also questioned whether I should have done more to “ring the alarm bells” about what I saw and heard from the displaced women, men and children who I met, including our staff. 

So, it may be surprising that, by the time I left Sri Lanka in early 2011, I was cautiously hopeful about the future of Sri Lanka, including that of the hundreds of thousands affected by thirty years of war.  My caution proved justified as there were still setbacks as measures to learn what happened to the thousands of missing, for accountability and to foster reconciliation, moved forward very slowly, if at all, and were often reversed.  However, in the longer term, my optimism was justified, as eventually people’s own voices through elections, and by brave protests, brought about dramatic changes that today still give many cautious hope for the future.

A key reason for my personal feeling of hope came from seeing what individual communities were doing, and experiencing their own strength and hope.

The story of the village of Adampan is a small example within this bigger picture, of the power of hope in helping people and communities to overcome insurmountable barriers and ways national and international partners can help people and communities to do this. When the Sri Lanka army began its attack on the northern areas controlled by the LTTE, Adampan was the area first attacked.  This led to the immediate displacement of the hundreds of families in the area, to areas further north. This was the first of at least twenty times they had to flee from fighting as Government forces advanced. Five months later, in September 2008, I met a group of families sheltering under flimsy materials on a roadside just south of the LTTE “capital” of Kilinochchi. They were from that same area. They told of being moved more than 20 times, as the LTTE told them every time to move further north and then being forced to move again as the Sri Lankan army advanced further and faster than the LTTE had expected.

Within a few weeks after I met these same people, they would have been among the 300,000 or more concentrated in an area less than 5 square km, to the northeast along the sea side. Caught between the remaining LTTE forces and Government troops, they were in effect used as human shields by the LTTE and eventually cut off from outside assistance because our humanitarian convoys could no longer get through the heavy fighting.  They were under similar flimsy shelters, many, especially children, were malnourished, and thousands were injured and killed as shells landed among them.

Though the LTTE tried to prevent people leaving this small area, and though crossing over to Government controlled areas was very dangerous, first small numbers, then larger numbers managed to cross over through minefields and through fighting, with the remaining displaced people ending up in late May in Government run “camps”.  Though there were agreed contingency plans to set up a number of these settlements for displaced, according to international principles, by April the military insisted all the displaced people were to be concentrated in one area where there was little or no existing infrastructure. Sri Lankan officials from the President on down, wanted to establish semi-permanent welfare villages where the displaced people would be for two to three years until the areas formerly under LTTE control were “cleaned up” of any remaining LTTE fighters, and of mines and unexploded ordnance. They wanted there to be strict controls on movement in and out of the “welfare villages”.  The people did not want this, rather they wanted to return to their home areas sooner. Therefore, the UN and international community agreed only to support temporary camps, though ones where there was not only food, shelter, and water and sanitation, but health facilities, access to reproductive health, education, and services which helped people to recover important documents regarding identity and land.  

Gradually confidence was built with the authorities managing the camps, and space was provided to restore basic services with the limited assistance we could provide; and more people were able to move in and out of the camps.

So, despite dismal living conditions in the camps, the temporary schools we helped to set up were well attended and the teachers (who were also in the camps and from the same communities) worked hard – as did health workers including those dealing with malnutrition. The areas in the camps where communities managed their own sanitation had clean, well-functioning latrines, unlike the earlier established semi-permanent areas where these were centrally provided and often filthy and damaged.

By assisting government efforts to clear mines and Unexploded Explosive Ordnance (UXO), space was also created for non-government mine organizations (e.g. the Halo Trust and others) to also work at scale. This combined effort permitted earlier returns. Some of the political and security reluctance of the government was overcome through a wide mix of national and international measures of which confidence building and compassion were important, if not sufficient, elements.

A return programme for the displaced population followed the basic principle that people who were displaced first would be returned first. So, in November 2009 I found myself in Adampan as part of the first return of displaced people back to their homes, organized by our UN team together with local government officials. It was the happiest and most hopeful experience I had since arriving in Sri Lanka! Despite the damages to their homes and farms, most were generally delighted to have proper identification cards again, recognizing they were in their village, and to have a cash grant from the UN through a local bank to be able to repair and rebuild their homes and farms. However, the biggest source of hope was that their children could return to their old school. Classes began almost immediately, even if that meant sitting on a floor in a damaged school.  The happiest scene I experienced was seeing children get off the bus and immediately see their old playground equipment – worse for wear but still there and working: after 2 years of living in hellish conditions – they were back home with their friends.

For them (and for me too) this was a demonstration of the power of generating hope. I saw that when people from Adampan and other places arrived from the “combat zone” in the camps between March and May 2009, they seemed hopeless. But as community was re-established, even in a camp environment, as they felt relatively safer, as they saw there was a prospect to return home and that there were opportunities for their children’s education, then their hope gradually returned and that in turn helped them to rebuild their lives and their community.

I am convinced that the story of Adampan, multiplied a thousand times, was an important element of Sri Lankans, through their own voices, eventually bringing about big changes in the country.  Hope was both more resilient than I thought, and more of a multiplier of change. Hope was key to peacebuilding, hope was key to recovery, and hope is key to continued human development for people in Sri Lanka.