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TAMIL NATION
LIBRARY:
Conflict Resolution
Request for copies or further
information may be made to Centre for Just Peace and
Democracy, Bahnof Strasse 13, 6020 Emmenbrucke, Switzerland,
email:
info@cjpdonline.org
[see also
Geopolitics shape Sri Lanka’s conflict - study -
TamilNet, Monday, 12 May 2008 - "Politics between
powerful states have always been integral to the
dynamics of war and peace in Sri Lanka, several
contributors to a collected volume exploring the
international dimensions of the island’s protracted
conflict say. The study by the Centre for Just Peace and
Democracy (CJPD) published this year comprises papers
presented by academics and analysts at a conference held
in Switzerland last June along with extracts of the
subsequent discussions. Among the papers published in
the CJPD book titled ‘International Dimensions of the
Conflict in Sri Lanka’ include the keynote presentations
by Prof. Johan Galtung, a leading conflict and peace
studies expert, Prof. Sumantra Bose, a scholar of
nationalism, and Mr. Nadesan Satyendra, a former
negotiator with the Tamil delegation at the Thimpu talks
in 1985 and writer of 25 years on the Sri Lankan
conflict.
more]
 "..The
primary purpose of the seminar was to understand the
international framework in order to discern the motives
of the international actors. Whereas statements made by
international actors in the course of public diplomacy
implied altruism to be the main factor driving the
actions of the international actors, there has emerged
strong evidence that the intervention is driven by
strategic and economic interests of the international
actors..."
Preface
Table of Contents
Contributor Profiles
[see also generally
Conflict Resolution: Tamil Eelam - Sri Lanka ]
 Preface
On 17th June 2007, the
Centre for Just Peace and Democracy (CJPD) in partnership with Transcend
International held a seminar in Luzerne, Switzerland to explore the
international dimensions of the conflict in Sri Lanka.
Conference Co-Chairs :
Gudrun Kramer, Transcend International
and Ana Pararajasingham, CJPD
CJPD is an action research centre working towards a peaceful resolution to
the armed conflict in Sri Lanka. It was founded in 2004 to formalize pre-existing
networks of activists and academics in the Tamil Diaspora and beyond who have
worked to bring about a just peace in Sri Lanka. CJPD works with all communities
to promote a just peace.
 Transcend International is a peace and development network for conflict
transformation by peaceful means. It was founded in 1993 by Prof. Dr. Johan
Galtung and comprises today about 300 invited academics and practitioners in the
field of peace-building from 80 different countries.
International involvement in the conflict between the Sinhala dominated Sri
Lankan Government and the Tamil people can be traced to the early 1980's and had
over the years involved several international actors-India, Western powers,
China and Pakistan.
The primary purpose of the seminar was to understand the international
framework in order to discern the motives of the international actors. Whereas
statements made by international actors in the course of public diplomacy
implied altruism to be the main factor driving the actions of the international
actors, there has emerged strong evidence that the intervention is driven by
strategic and economic interests of the international actors.
It is not surprising that the conflict in Sri Lanka should receive
international attention given its proximity to
India,
China's increased presence
in the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka's strategic location in respect of the sea
routes through the Malacca Strait into the South China Sea.
But there is not only reluctance on the part of the international actors to
openly state what precisely those interests are but a strong inclination to deny
the existence of such interests.
In 2006, Jonathan Goodhand, a British academic noted that that the "Sri
Lankan conflict is not, and has never been an 'introverted' civil war and the
international and regional dimensions have always been crucial."'
Mounting evidence of the extent of international involvement has led to the
assertion that in Sri Lanka there are two conflicts underway-the first, the
armed conflict between the main protagonists- Government of Sri Lanka and the
Tamil people; the second between various international actors.
Research papers were submitted by academics and activists from Sri Lanka, the
Tamil Diaspora and the international community explaining/exploring the
rationale for international intervention.
The seminar commenced with three key note speakers providing their
perspectives on the international dimensions. This was followed by a brief
presentation of the papers submitted.
The matters covered by the key note speakers and the papers submitted were
discussed at some length at sessions where the Chatham House Rules' were invoked
to enable a free and frank exchange of views..
The researchers were given the opportunity to revise their papers to
incorporate insights gained during these discussions. In addition, written
submissions were received from two other participants at these discussions.
This publication comprises 5 sections.
Section 1-Perspectives by key note speakers.
Section 2 -Papers submitted.
Section 3 -Discussions
Section 4 -Information Sheets
Section 5-Contributor profiles
The Centre for Just Peace and Democracy envisages further exploring the theme
of international dimensions of the conflict in Sri Lanka through seminars,
conferences and publications.
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Professor A.M. Navaratna-Bandara
Professor A M Navaratna-Bandara, B.A. (Ceylon), M.A. (Peradeniya), D.
Phil (York), teaches political science, public policy and public
administration at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka since 1974. At
present he is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights,
University of Peradeniya. In 2001, 2004 & 2005 he served as the Director of
the National Integration Programme Unit (NIPU), a project funded by the
Royal Norwegian Government, affiliated to the Ministry of Constitutional
Affairs and National Integration. Since 1993 he has been engaged in civil
society campaigns for political solutions to the ethnic problem in Sri
Lanka. He has several academic publications to his credit including
Management of Ethnic Secessionist Conflict; The Big Neighbour syndrome,
Dartmouth Publishing Company Ltd., Aldershot, England, (1995) and "The Peace
Process and the Real Losers", in Jayadeva Uyangoda and Maurine Perera
(eds.), Sri Lanka's Peace Process-2002, Critical Perspectives, Social
Scientists, Association, Colombo, (144-148)(2003)
Professor Sumantra Bose
Professor Sumantra
Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His books include
Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka
(Harvard University Press, 2007), a newly published study of peace processes
in ethnonational disputes, and States, Nations, Sovereignty: Sri Lanka,
India and the Tamil Eelam Movement (Sage Publications, 1994). He is also the
author of Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Harvard University
Press, 2003), and Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2002). Sumantra is from
India. He graduated from Amherst College, Massachusetts and received a
doctorate in political science from Columbia University in 1998.
Dr. S.Chandrasekharan
Dr. S.Chandrasekharan is currently the director of the
South Asia
Analysis Group, a private think tank in New Delhi. He holds a Ph.D. in
International Water Resources and specializes in South Asian regions,
security, architecture and non proliferation. Previously, he held a senior
position with the Indian Government.
Dr. Jonathan Goodhand
Dr.
Jonathan Goodhand studied at the Universities of Birmingham and
Manchester, with qualifications in education as well as development. He
worked for some years managing humanitarian and development programmes in
conflict situations in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and has extensive
experience as a researcher and advisor in South and Central Asia for a range
of NGOs and aid agencies, including DFID, SDC, ILO and UNDP. His research
interests include the political economy of aid and conflict, NGOs and
peacebuilding and 'post conflict' reconstruction. He is currently a Lecturer
in Development Practice at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), University of London. He helped develop
DFID's Strategic Conflict
Assessment methodology and has published widely on the political economy of
conflict, peacebuilding and international assistance. He has been working in
or on Sri Lanka since 1992. He was a co-author of
Aid,
Conflict & Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka 2000 - 2005, a strategic conflict
assessment published by the Asia Foundation in 2005
Professor Johan Galtung
Professor Johan Galtung is a Norwegian professor, founder and
co-director of TRANSCEND. He is seen as a pioneer of peace and conflict
research and founded the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in
Oslo. He has participated as mediator in over 40 conflicts all over the
world including Sri Lanka. In 1964 he founded the
Journal of Peace Research.
He was the first professor of peace and conflict research in Scandinavia,
employed at the University of Oslo. He has published more than 1000 articles
covering a wide-range of fields, including peaceful conflict transformation,
deep culture, peace pedagogy, reconciliation, development, peace building
and empowerment, global governance, direct structural and cultural
peace/violence, peace journalism, and reflections on current events, and
more than 100 books translated into dozens of languages. Since 2004 he is
member of the Advisory Council of the
Committee for a Democratic UN.
Dr. Sumanasiri Liyanage
Dr.
Sumanasiri Liyanage teaches political economy at the University of
Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. His principal research interests include social
movements, social justice and critical social theory. He is a critical
participant of Sri Lankan civil society initiatives for peace and conflict
transformation and a regular columnist for Sinhala and English newspapers.
Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead
Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead is Assistant Vice President of International
Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. He served in the U.S.
Foreign Service from 1977 to 2006, and was U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka from
August 2003 to July 2006.
Professor John P. Neelsen
Professor John P. Neelsen (1943 Berlin/Germany), M.A., Ph.D. is a
Professor in the Dept of Sociology, Tuebingen University/Germany. Teaching
experience: Banaras (India), Zurich (Switzerland), Nancy (France) and
different universities in Germany (Berlin, Bremen, etc.) Member Scientific
Board: World Centre for Peace, Freedom and Human Rights, Verdun/France.
ATTAC/Germany. Rosa-LuxemburgFoundation, Berlin/Germany. Research and
publications on: North-South Relations; Sociology of Development; Human
Rights; Social Inequality; Case studies on India and Sri Lanka. Six years
research and field experience in South Asia.
Dr Sachithanandam Sathananthan
Dr.
Sathananthan was born in Jaffna and holds a Ph D degree from the
University of Cambridge. He was Visiting Research Scholar at the Jawaharlal
Nehru University School of Inteernational Studies (1999-2000) Assistant
Director, Marga Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka (1986-1989). His research
interests cover national movements in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Dr.
Sathananthan is a filmmaker. Among others, he explores the cultural roots of
Sindhi nationalism in Pakistan, and 'Suicide Warriors' (1996) on women cadre
of the LTTE. His feature film `Khamosh Pani' ('Silent Waters') won the
Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno International Film Festival in
Switzerland, 2003. He has co-directed and produced a documentary film on
Pakistan constructed around a dinner discussion with President Pervez
Musharraf.
Mr Nadesan Satyendra
Mr Nadesan Satyendra
serves as Adviser to the Centre for Just Peace and Democracy (CJPD).
Dr Chris Smith
Dr.
Chris Smith is an Associate Fellow with the International Security
Programme at Chatham House. He is also Senior Visiting Research Fellow at
the International Policy Research, King's College, London; a Senior Visiting
Fellow at the Centre for Governance at the University of Bristol; Visiting
Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Innovation Management
(CENTRIM) and; Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Security Programme. He was
the founder director of the
Conflict, Security and Development Group, which
works closely with leading policy researchers in developing countries. He
has published widely on South Asian defence and security issues, light
weapons proliferation, the military utility of landmines and security sector
transformation. He is currently working as a freelance consultant. His main
area of work at present involves preparing expert witness reports for the
British courts on Sri Lankan asylum seekers in the UK.
Professor M. Sornarajah
Professor M Sornarajah studied law at the University of Ceylon, Yale Law
School and the University of London. He has taught law at the University of
Ceylon, the University of Tasmania (Australia), the University of Dundee
(Scotland), the American University at Washington (USA) and the National
University of Singapore. He was a Sterling Fellow at the Yale Law School. He
was research fellow at the Centre for International Law of the University of
Cambridge and at the Max Planck Institute for International Law at
Heidelberg, Germany. He is Professorial of the University of Dundee. He is
the author of the The International Law on Foreign Investment
(2nd edition, Cambridge University Press),
The Settlement of Foreign Investment Disputes (Kluwer) and several other books and articles. He has been counsel and
arbitrator in several international law cases.
Mr Oliver Walton
Oliver Walton is a PhD Candidate at the School of Oriental and African
Studies. He has worked on Sri Lanka for a number of years and worked for
a national humanitarian NGO between 2003 and 2005. He is currently
undertaking research focusing on the politics of NGO peacebuilding in Sri
Lanka. He holds an MA in History from the University of Cambridge and an
MSc
in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS. His research interests
include NGO legitimacy and strategizing, NGO peacebuilding and the Sri
Lankan conflict.
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