Good morning! Ladies and gentlemen, dear
colleagues and friends.
We gave the title 'New Trajectories for
Peace in Sri Lanka' to this effort, this joint effort, based in
a way on the metaphor, Mr.
Satyendra
just shared with us from Ury and Fischer, hoping that we can
move beyond just putting positions to each other.
Our effort in a way is based on three
assumptions. The first of these assumptions is that the
protractedness of the Sri Lankan Conflict and more recently the
protractedness of the Sri Lankan Peace Process does not only
need a political breakthrough but it also needs an intellectual
breakthrough.
This is a quotation from the
paper of Prof.
Uyangoda who will be our first speaker and I think this is
an assumption of many sitting in this room, particularly those
of us coming originally from academia thinking that, if there is
a problem in the real world outside there then, systematic
reflection and theoretical research will help to inspire us to
find ways forward.
There is a famous saying from John Paul
Lederart, a particular hero in the field of conflict resolution,
that �if you want to move processes like peace processes forward
you first have to undertake an intellectual effort of
complexifying�, meaning you have to understand the complexities
of the conflict and the peace process.
But at one stage, you have to be capable of
simplifying it. You have to identify what are the decisive
steps to be taken to move forward and I think this is also a
particular challenge for us here, today and tomorrow. How
do we move from the complexifying analysis in all these papers
that you have put together to some simplifying conclusions which
will help us to identify the way forward.
The second assumption is that, I think it�s
not, by chance that many of you are indeed coming from academia.
You all know that the Sri Lankan Conflict belongs to the most
researched conflicts among all the conflicts around the world
and I think there are several reasons for that. In the past
many people reflected on that �why is that?� Is that because
this is a kind of substitute for finding practical ways forward
and out of this conflict? Is it in a way a substitute for
addressing the conflict itself or are we now preparing a body of
knowledge which at one stage will switch from quantity to
quality? My hope still is that the quantitative stage can lead
to a new quality of insights and the wealth of papers we have
got for today and tomorrow hopefully will also lead to this
quality switch.
The third assumption is, and Mr. Satyendra
outlined that particularly, that there is a need in conflict
situations like this to open up to understand the world from the
perspective of the other side. If one does not do that then all
academic analysis will not be sufficient.
Now theses three assumptions guided us when
we brainstormed while preparing this seminar and how to identify
the sessions and the clusters of issues. After many efforts to
come up with something reasonable, we identified altogether
seven issue areas to prepare the final session. The final
session being the one where we would inspire all of you who have
come up with a re-envisioning of how to move the peace process
forward.
These seven preparing issues areas are,
First issue area: To look at the root causes of the conflict
and particularly at those factors which have led to the Cease
Fire.
Now, there are three basic insights from
conflict resolution which are relevant here. Number one is if
you do not address the root causes you will never substantially
resolve the conflict. Number two: do not get dragged into a
hierarchy of blaming who did what to whom, because that might
not be a very good approach for conflict resolution. And at the
same time number three: particularly for asymmetric conflicts if
you do not acknowledge what has happened in the past it will be
very difficult to move forward.
Our understanding was that it was
particularly important to understand the window of opportunity
which created the Cease Fire Agreement which luckily still
holds. And then it also allows us to answer the question, are
the framework conditions still there to sustain this cease fire
agreement? And that leads to the
Second
issue area:
An in-depth analysis of the Cease Fire
Agreement and its implementation, which as you all know is now
also crucial in the process from Geneva one to Geneva two. Is
the balance of power which made the Cease Fire Agreement of 2001
possible still valid? If it�s not valid, is it necessary to have
a new cease fire agreement as some people argue or are there
other equivalent factors which will sustain the existing Cease
Fire Agreement and take this forward as a basis for a
revitalisation of the peace process.
Third issue area: politics of aid. Now as you all know one
of the basic assumptions of the peace process from 2002 to 2003
was that normalisation for the people affected from the war is
one of the key ridge boarders between the cease fire and
addressing the co-political issues. Unfortunately this hope,
this idea of normalisation as a bridge builder didn�t work as it
was envisioned, why was that so? And what are the confusions out
of that for the future peace process?
Fourth issue area: Session number four will look at the
internal dynamics of peace process, the guiding notion behind
that, is that one cannot fully understand what happened in the
last four years without looking at what happened within the
South, within the Sinhala polity, within the Tamil polity as
well as within the Muslim polity. And we think it is important
to analyse that properly classical theory, classical explanation
for the difficulties in this respect was the ethno-political
outbidding within the Southern Polity, but also within the other
polities.
We had such dynamisms and we think it is
important to see and how far this could be addressed in a way
that when the
issue area number five the process of the peace process as
such between and among the main parties can be inspired. And
here we will have a few contributions which will look on the one
hand at the asymmetric character of this process and on the
other hand at the particular dynamisms of the interaction
between the parties.
The sixth session will look at what kind of impact these
strategies of the parties in the peace process had on the people
effected the often voted discussion about the peace dividend and
the discussion on how are the different tracks, from track one
to track three are linked with each other, why was there no
positive reproducing and forward leading dynamism between these
tracks.
And last but not least, it is obvious that
without looking
at the international framework conditions it is difficult to
understand how the complexities of the Sri Lankan Peace Process
in the last four years have evolved. And that relates on the one
hand to the hypothesis of the so called �over
internationalisation� others might say �under utilisation of the
over internationalisation� of this peace process, the role of
Norway, the role of the co-chairs, the regional factors as well
as more recently the issue of sanctions and incentives.
This hopefully will all lead to some
conclusions and ideas to be taken into account in the final,
eighth
session which will have two rounds, where we would also like
to integrate some of the ideas you have put forward in your one
� two page for re-envisioning the Peace Process.
