In preparation for Sri Lanka’s next Country Partnership Strategy with the World Bank, we’ve been consulting with numerous groups, including those representing youth, for their ideas and feedback. Traveling to all corners of the country and interacting with many youth groups in Sri Lanka, it is clear that youth want more -- more opportunities, more facilities, more acceptance, more inclusion.
In contrast, discussing the same issues with the older generation, their view is that youth are unskilled, lack exposure to real-world challenges, are not dependable, and are too picky about available jobs.
The gap between the perceptions and aspirations of the two groups seems like the two rails of a railway track that are never destined to meet.
‘Equal to whom?’ seems to be my burning question when I see women in post conflict Sri Lanka battling it out all alone due to their present circumstances.
A three decade old war that ravaged north – east of Sri Lanka is now in the throes of reaping its peace dividends, slowly…
The war changed not just the landscape of the north-east Sri Lanka, but also the demographic profile, leaving many widows and women headed families destitute. While the official head count of this group is yet to be released by the government,it is apparent that the male to female ratio that was almost 50 -50 has now changed significantly in this part of the country.
“I am the mother, father and the entrepreneur of my family” sums up the plight of 26 year old Sutharshini. A widow who has lost her husband and brother to the war that forever changed the lives of many Sri Lankan Tamils. Sutharshini and her two children represent the typical Sri Lankan Tamil woman who has just been resettled after being an internally displaced person (IDP) in a refugee camp for almost a year.
Batticaloa District, in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka is an ethnically diverse city with a population of approximately 490,000. The three decade old civil war wreaked havoc in this beautiful coastal town where the majority of the people are Tamil (74.5%) with a smaller Muslim (23.5%) and a Sinhala (1.3%) community living amidst some amount of tension over their ethnic differences.
Driving into Batticaloa town was a pleasant surprise for me after almost ten years. The bustling town was visually coming alive with the excellent road network that made the long drive from Colombo a real pleasure. Well constructed roads, the new and gleaming centre median lamp posts and the ongoing construction work painted a very positive feeling about the overall development of downtown Batticaloa, which was a welcome change for me. Batticaloa town’s landscape was surely changing. Needless to say I was wowed!
In preparation for Sri Lanka’s next Country Partnership Strategy with the World Bank, we’ve been consulting with numerous groups, including those representing youth, for their ideas and feedback. Traveling to all corners of the country and interacting with many youth groups in Sri Lanka, it is clear that youth want more -- more opportunities, more facilities, more acceptance, more inclusion.
‘Equal to whom?’ seems to be my burning question when I see women in post conflict Sri Lanka battling it out all alone due to their present circumstances.
Batticaloa District, in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka is an ethnically diverse city with a population of approximately 490,000. The three decade old civil war wreaked havoc in this beautiful coastal town where the majority of the people are Tamil (74.5%) with a smaller Muslim (23.5%) and a Sinhala (1.3%) community living amidst some amount of tension over their ethnic differences.