As part of NPC's two-pronged strategy in following up its joint pluralism initiative with the Canadian Government, NPC will conduct a nine month series of nine Track II-level educational conferences, that is informal workshops with elites and second tier leaders from major sectors, such as government, business, religious, and civil society, to foster awareness on the values of pluralism and its application to the Sri Lankan Conflict,

Track II conferences are effective in that they can become productive working groups, build relationships, and are spared the public pressure of Track 1 negotiations. These Track II conferences will be held in district-level centers of diversity in Sri Lanka.  Three locations: Batticaloa, Trincomalee, and Ampara, recently had the Eastern Province elections this spring, a movement by the government to advance the state of order, normalcy, and coexistence in the province.  It remains to be seen what success this strategy will have, but there have been many questions as to whether the elections were free and fair, there allegedly have been human rights violations by a number of groups, and there are questions of the future of peace and development in the region.  These are questions that a pluralism-based dialogue can and should address. The other locations: Puttalam, Ratnapura, Galle, Matale, Kandy, and Nuwara Eliya also contain combinations of large numbers of different ethnic communities, be they Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, and Estate Tamils, and the conferences aim to support the active engagement with diversity that is necessary for coexistence and democracy in the local areas and the island as a whole.

Each conference will begin with an evening reception to promote networking among local leaders.  The next day, resource persons—some of them possibly even participants in the regional conference in March—will have presentations on five of the subtopics of pluralism drawn out from that regional conference: Energetic Engagement with Diversity, Understanding Differences, Encouragement of Dialogue, Maintenance of Democracy, and Respect for Human Rights and Freedoms of Every Individual and Community. The participants will follow these presentations with discussions on the status of these standards in their own experience and what can be done to foster pluralism in Sri Lanka.