Around 50 people including representatives of Community Based Organizations, Kattankudy community leaders and DIRC members took part in an Ifthar organized by the Batticaloa DIRC under NPC’s Promoting Inter-faith and Inter-ethnic Dialogue project.

The NPC carried out training on Transitional Justice (TJ) for a group of local level politicians and community leaders from the Galle and Matara Districts under its USAID-funded Religions to Reconcile project, which is implemented with a Jordan based partner organization, Generations For Peace.

Unless the government shows that it is capable of delivering results soon, the slow progress of problem solving at the ground level will continue to erode public support for the government. The weak performance of the economy is on the minds of most people. The expected job creation through industrial growth has not materialized nor has there been technological improvement that could raise the level of incomes of agricultural and fishing families. Instead of rising standards of living they experience the rising cost of living. In the case of the North and East where the bulk of the war affected people live, the discontent is even greater. They bear a double burden. In addition to not partaking of the fruits of nationwide development along with their compatriots in the rest of the country, they also suffer from the slow return of lands taken over by the military.

The unanimous passage through Parliament of the amendment to the law that establishes the Office of Missing Persons has revived the hope that the government will give priority to inter-ethnic reconciliation. The formation of the Government of National Unity has provided an unique opportunity to obtain a bipartisan political consensus that encompasses the two main political parties in the country, and indeed the larger polity, to deal with the country’s longest standing unresolved problem—its ethnic conflict. The Office of Missing Persons (OMP) was one of the four reconciliation mechanisms that the government promised to the international community in Geneva in October 2015. This was the landmark event that turned the international community from being a critic of Sri Lanka’s reconciliation policies to being a supporter.