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The ICRC in Sri Lanka
01-05-2011 Overview
The ICRC has been working in Sri Lanka since 1989. Operations have focused on helping civilians, visiting people held in relation to the conflict, facilitating family links, improving water supplies and economic security for IDPs and resident communities, providing physical rehabilitation for disabled people and promoting IHL among the armed forces and the civil authorities.
The ICRC began working in Sri Lanka in 1989. Initially, its role was to visit detainees held in relation with the JVP uprising in the south of the country. Subsequently, its scope of operations expanded to address humanitarian needs resulting from the armed conflict in the north and east between the government and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)
The armed conflict ended on 18 May 2009. During its final phase, thousands of people were trapped in a gradually shrinking area, where they were exposed to intense fighting and lacked food, water, sanitation and health care. The ICRC, which was one of the few international organizations authorized to remain in the conflict zone, worked with the Sri Lanka Red Cross (SLRCS) to evacuate the sick and wounded from the combat zone by sea and to facilitate the delivery of food and limited quantities of medicines into the area.
After the end of active hostilities, some 300,000 people displaced by the fighting were kept in government-run camps, mainly around Vavuniya. Working with the SLRCS, the ICRC provided substantial quantities of aid for displaced people held in the camps until July 2009. The ICRC was also able to register most of an estimated 11,000 alleged LTTE "surrendees."
Since then, the ICRC has progressively closed all its offices outside Colombo at the request of the Sri Lanka government, and is now conducting its operations exclusively from the capital.
In cooperation with the SLRCS, the ICRC runs a family visits programme, helping families keep in touch with relatives held in various places throughout the country by providing them with travel allowances so they can visit them. ICRC teams assess the conditions of detention in the main prisons, which still hold people in relation to the conflict. Following these visits, the ICRC submits confidential reports to the authorities, to ensure that detainees are being treated in accordance with international standards and domestic law.
In Vavuniya district, the ICRC and the SLRCS are setting up a pilot project that will provide families affected by the conflict with micro credits, vocational training or grants to help them restart their livelihoods.
The ICRC provides the Jaffna Jaipur Centre for Disability Rehabilitation with technical and material support, enabling the Centre to fit patients, including mine victims, with artificial limbs. The Centre is currently looking after some 2,000 disabled people in the Jaffna Penisula. In the south of the country, the ICRC is supporting a physical rehabilitation centre in Tangalle.
The organization promotes incorporation of the relevant international humanitarian norms into the rules and regulations and the training programmes of the armed forces and police, and into the curricula of Sri Lankan academic institutions. In the light of Sri Lanka's role as a major contributor to United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world, the ICRC holds regular briefings for departing contingents.
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