News

Batticaloa District Inter Religious Committee (DIRC) worked with religious leaders and government officials to end a conflict over burial grounds in the Vaharai area. Pressure and advocacy of the members resulted in government land being allocated for a new graveyard for non Catholics.

Hambantota town in a multi religious and multi ethnic place; although the majority are Sinhalese, there is a sizeable Muslim and Tamil population. For many years people of different ethnicities and religions have lived in harmony without disputes or conflicts.

NPC’s project, Post Conflict Healing: A Women’s Manifesto, was implemented with the support of FOKUS from April 2014 to December 2016 in nine districts across the country that were both directly and indirectly affected by the war: Vavuniya, Mannar, Trincomalee, Ampara, Galle, Hambantota, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, and Puttalam.

At its monthly meeting, Jaffna DIRC discussed ways of persuading Buddhist monks and other Sinhala people to join the committee and decided to make a plan to achieve this. Members agreed that activities could not be effective without the participation of all religious leaders and ethnic communities.

A workshop for 32 youth leaders representing 16 districts on Transitional Justice (TJ) and the proposed new constitution was held in Colombo.

At the request of the Secretariat for the Coordination of Reconciliation Mechanisms of the government, the University Grants Commission has given NPC the green light to conduct programmes on Transitional Justice (TJ) in several universities for faculty members and students.

At the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NPC facilitated a meeting to bring together government officials and civil society organisations engaged in the promotion and protection of human rights to discuss Sri Lanka’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Colombo.

A session on learning about and sharing of cultural and religious values for supporting peace and reconciliation was held in Thambala and Oonagama areas in the Polonnaruwa district.

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.

Thirty two participants from 16 districts, including lawyers, doctors, principals, teachers and young entrepreneurs, attended a workshop in Colombo on Transitional Justice Mechanisms, the New Constitution and the Referendum.

Members of Batticaloa’s District Inter Religious Committee (DIRC) decided to make it a Vesak with a difference by inviting people of all religions to participate in the celebrations. Although the Batticaloa district is home to Muslims, Tamils and Sinhalese, the different communities rarely participate at each other’s festivals.

Forty nine members of the Nuwara Eliya DIRC, including Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim religious leaders, attended a training session on pluralism conducted by NPC.

A one-week training on conflict transformation for peace workers was held in Colombo under NPC’s Religions to Reconcile project, which is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented with a Jordan-based partner organization, Generations For Peace.

A dispute between Buddhists and Muslims because of a Buddha statue in front of a meat shop belonging to Muslims was discussed at DIRC Badulla’s monthly meeting under NPC’s project Reconciling Inter Ethnic and Inter Religious Differences (RIID).

Stories in the third anthology of the Write to Reconcile project focused on Sri Lanka’s post war situation with emphasis on border villages and the Vanni.

Participants travelled to the Vanni and the Sinhala border villages to hear stories of what the people had undergone and to get a sense of their lives and issues post war. In addition, human rights workers visited the workshop in Anuradhapura and spoke about their work and the ongoing issues for war affected people.