Karuna Center for Peacebuilding

Sri Lanka
Map of Sri Lanka

In 2002 a cease-fire was negotiated by Norway between the Tamil Tigers and the Sinhalese dominated government, ending 19 years of civil war. However, the cease-fire did not hold. By 2006, the parties had returned to violence, and in January 2008 the Government of Sri Lanka officially abrogated the cease-fire. When the guns are once again silenced, the challenge of reconstruction and reconciliation in this long-divided country will confront the weary and wary population, as well as their international partners.

Karuna Center’s Engagement in Sri Lanka
In 2011, Karuna Center is beginning a program to promote reconciliation among religious leaders in northeast Sri Lanka, and we have been awarded a grant by USAID for this work.

Karuna Center began leading seminars in Sri Lanka in 1994, working throughout the country with a variety of civil society organizations to teach the skills and practices of conflict resolution, increase mutual understanding between identity groups, foster social responsibility, and encourage communal harmony.

Team 1325 and Women in Sri Lanka:
Building a Common Platform for Peace

Dishani Jayaweera is a Director of Programs for the Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation: Home for Diversity, an NGO in Sri Lanka she co-founded after participating in Karuna Center programs.

"My work with Karuna Center gave me the confidence that I could do more than manage logistics for development projects and inspired me to start my own organization in 2003. Karuna Center was the first organization to work with us as a partner. Today we provide facilitation, program development, and consultation for grassroots groups as well as international organizations."

In September 2008, Karuna Center returned to Sri Lanka in partnership with AWAW, Association of War Affected Women and with gender expert Sanam Anderlini, to offer a seminar for women that combined peacebuilding and gender issues in war and peace. Topics included specific knowledge about UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, as well as training in coalition building across differences of ethnicity and regions within Sri Lanka. The workshop participants developed an action component for their engagement in 2008-09, which they will work on in regional groups. We ended with a UN Resolution 1325 conference in Colombo to further encourage the implementation of 1325 by including women in future peace negotiations in Sri Lanka.
(See Sri Lanka, Fall 2008).

Preparing for Peace:
Leadership Training for Dialogue and Reconciliation
From 2003-05, Karuna Center led a two-year training-of-trainers program for 25 participants who were mentored in leading their own reconciliation projects for all sectors of society. This program was supported in part through a grant from the United States Institute of Peace.

This program developed out of Karuna Center’s extensive experience in leading peacebuilding and dialogue workshops in Sri Lanka and through requests from local partners for advanced skills to build local capacity for postconflict peace and reconciliation. Participants were selected for a balance of ethnicity, gender, geographic distribution, and leadership potential. The design of the program called for four five-day training seminars, each to be held in one of Sri-Lanka’s troubled and underserved regions. These seminars sequentially covered a comprehensive curriculum in conflict analysis, conflict interventions, and the facilitation of programs in inter-ethnic dialogue and reconciliation. To broaden the group’s collective understanding of Sri Lanka’s many regional challenges and differences, each seminar included exposure to the particular problems of a particular region and to local development and peacebuilding efforts. Participants, mentored by Karuna Center staff, also designed and facilitated peacebuilding workshops for area residents.

During the course of the program, participants created projects that they led in multi-ethnic teams. These included:

Peacebuilding through CEFE (Competency-based Economics through the Formation of Enterprises), a program for unemployed Tamil and Muslim youth from the Northeast
The Social Harmony Project, a program that created peace brigades to intervene in conflicts at the University of Sri Jayawardhenapura Medical School and surrounding community
Dialogues for Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim religious leaders
Post-tsunami “cash for work” programs jointly involving Tamil and Muslim villagers with previously strained relations
Dialogue training for youth field workers who, in turn, started community level dialogues for other youth
Post-tsunami restoration of public spaces through the cooperative efforts of Tamil and Sinhalese youth.

Paula and Program Participants Participants also worked with Karuna Center staff to develop a peacebuilding training manual that has been translated into Tamil and Sinhalese and widely distributed. Our participants are now actively engaged in their own NGOs, promoting a renewed peace process and implementing what they have learned.

In September 2008, three years after the completion of the Peace Leadership Training Program, Karuna Center Director Paula Green traveled to Sri Lanka for a new program. While there she convened an evening for the Peace Leadership group, which was attended by 15 of the 25 members. All of these participants have maintained their commitment to peacebuilding activities in Sri Lanka, working for an end to violent conflict and a just peace for the island nation. They promote and practice inter-ethnic tolerance and diversity, and encourage reconciliation processes in the service of national healing and establishing sustainable peace. We are pleased to see the strong results our training program in the values and engagement of our participants, who have taken to heart their identities as peacebuilders for all of Sri Lanka.