USAID/OTI Sri Lanka Quarterly Report
|
|
April - June 2011 |
Printer Friendly (114kb - pdf) |
Program Description
USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) program in Sri Lanka is part of an integrated strategy to stabilize, transform, and develop the country's Eastern and Northern Provinces and assist communities by providing support for socioeconomic reintegration activities. OTI assumed management of USAID/ Sri Lanka's Eastern Province program in February 2010 and renamed it the Reintegration and Stabilization in the East and North (RISEN) program when it expanded activities to the Northern Province.
RISEN's objectives are targeted at (1) assisting community reintegration to increase participation, social cohesion, and economic viability, and (2) increasing civic engagement between conflict-affected communities and the rest of Sri Lankan society, including government institutions.
Specific activities vary, but include working with youth, facilitating livelihood improvements and vocational training, enhancing access to information and education, and supporting small-scale infrastructure rehabilitation projects, community support services, and a range of community improvement efforts.
The RISEN program collaborates closely with the Government of Sri Lanka's Ministry of Economic Development to address a wide range of development and transitional needs.
Activities
Facilitating Community-Focused Reintegration – RISEN identifies communities where militant recruitment has historically been high and to where significant numbers of people displaced by the conflict are returning. The program collaborates and consults with the Government of Sri Lanka and other donors to develop prioritized activities. Community needs are identified by collaborating with local authorities and the public, and projects are developed to proactively address security issues, both human and economic.
Building Capacity to Address Rehabilitation Needs of At-Risk Youth – Conflict-affected young men and women require support and assistance to successfully reintegrate into civilian life and train for market-driven jobs. In some cases, individuals may need specialized support to cope with war-induced trauma. RISEN helps improve the quality of vocational training services, provides job-related guidance, delivers psychosocial counseling, and increases access to services for conflict-affected people. RISEN has also created programs to provide conflict-affected school-age youths with supplementary education and services that support their return to the formal education system.
Rebuilding Community Infrastructure – Three decades of civil conflict have taken a heavy toll on much of Sri Lanka's public infrastructure, particularly in the eastern and northern areas that were formerly under the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). RISEN works with local communities to refurbish critical infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, roads, irrigation tanks, wells, a lighthouse, streetlights, and markets. RISEN is also assisting efforts to clear mines from agricultural lands to allow production to resume.
Restoring Livelihoods – Since economic self-sufficiency is essential to post-conflict reintegration, stabilization, and transition to peace, RISEN is providing conflict-affected communities with training and tools to restart income-generating activities. In addition to providing vocational training to at-risk youth, RISEN assists farmers, fishermen, herders, and craftspeople to improve production and marketing of their goods.
Country Situation
U.N. Panel of Experts Report and Channel 4 Documentary – The U.N. Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka delivered its report to the U.N. Secretary-General in April, alleging serious violations of human rights by both the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka in 2009 at the end of the civil war. The Panel also called for an independent investigation into war crimes. In June, Great Britain's Channel 4 aired an hour-long investigation, "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields," that purportedly shows Sri Lankan troops committing war crimes. The Government of Sri Lanka has decried the video footage as fake, even though the film has been independently verified by forensic pathologists and subjected to months of tests by audio-visual experts commissioned by the United Nations.
Return of Internally Displaced Persons – More than 350,000 people were displaced in 2009 during the final phases of the civil war. Most of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) sought refuge at the Menik Farm camp in Vavuniya District. As of May, all but approximately 16,000 camp residents had returned to their districts of origin or have been placed with host families. The districts of Kilinochchi, Jaffna, and Mullaitivu in the Northern Province have seen the largest number of returns. The Government of Sri Lanka said that it would complete the IDP return process and close the Menik Farm camp by the end of 2010. The remaining camp residents' homes are in areas where lands have been mined or that remain under military control in Mullaitivu District.
Access to the North – The Government of Sri Lanka continued to restrict access to the Northern Province's central Vanni area for international agencies, international non-governmental organizations, and foreign diplomatic missions. In October 2010, OTI was granted access to the North for three months. In December, the Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Task Force for the North extended OTI's access permit (including USAID, U.S. Embassy, and implementing partner staff) through April 5, 2011. OTI requested an additional six-month extension, but the government extended the permit by only three months, through July 5.
Grants Summary
Between June 2010 and May 2011, OTI, through its implementing partner Development Alternatives Inc., has funded 82 small-grant and technical assistance activities totaling $5,722,221. The chart below shows the funding breakdown, by percentage, for activities by sector: access to information, 6%; disaster response, 9%; education, 23%; governance, 5%; health, 17%; infrastructure, 11%; livelihoods, 26%; protection, 2%; and water and sanitation, 1%.
Upcoming Events
| July |
- |
The Katirkamam / Kataragama Esala Festival. The festival provides a rare opportunity for Sri Lanka's religious and ethnic groups to come together, worship, and shed racial, ethnic, and religious differences. The event is held in a multi-religious, sacred city containing an Islamic mosque of great antiquity and Hindu and Buddhist temples. More than 2 million people participate in this annual event that is renowned in Sri Lanka for its ecumenical, interethnic, and inclusive nature. |
| July 23 |
- |
Local government elections in Jaffna, Kilinochchi, and Mullaitivu will give citizens their first opportunity to vote after three decades of LTTE control and influence. |
Highlights
|
| A Mullaitivu folk dancer waits for his cue at the Jaffna Music Festival.
|
| |
Jaffna Music Festival Promotes Reconciliation – For three days and nights, the Jaffna Music Festival showcased Sri Lanka's rich cultural heritage and united a nation. The festival was the first of its kind in the North since the end of the conflict that divided the country's diverse populace. The celebration in Jaffna brought people from across the country to see and hear multiethnic, multicultural acts from Sri Lanka and around the world. OTI and the Norwegian Embassy supported the festival to provide a platform for reconciliation and foster interest in and respect for diversity through the common language of music and shared experience, seeking to dispatch the misconceptions that drive wedges between people and communities. More than 13,000 people attended the festival, and artists from 23 Sri Lankan groups representing different ethnic and religious backgrounds performed. For many of the performers, the gathering provided a first opportunity to meet peers from across Sri Lanka.
Supporting Stability by Connecting Young People to Jobs – More than 75 percent of the people in the North live below the poverty line. Young men and women in particular are limited in their access to employment opportunities. Taking advantage of the window of opportunity that peace has provided, OTI and JobsNet, Sri Lanka's national employment service, organized a job training and placement program. The program screened applicants, registered unemployed youths in its database, and provided career guidance and training sessions on résumé preparation and interview skills. Following the training initiative, the city of Vavuniya hosted its first-ever Jobs Fair. More than 15,000 youths attended the fair, and by the end of the event, after nearly 8,000 interviews, employers had made over 3,200 job offers.
Road-Building Technology Transfer Supports Community Reintegration – OTI provided training in low-cost road construction techniques to three Tamil and Muslim villages located in an isolated area of eastern Vakarai. The training enabled the villages to each build 1km of a 3km road and link the communities to the rest of the division and to previously inaccessible services. Fifty-four families who relocated to the area after the 2004 tsunami, and who were subsequently displaced by conflict, are now resettling along the new road. In addition, the communities successfully lobbied local authorities and received permission and support to construct two more roads in the villages. Word of this successful community effort has spread, and villagers trained in the road-building techniques are passing along their knowledge to their neighbors in nearby villages. The neighbors have begun repairs to an additional 4km of rural roadways in their communities.
Voter Education and Local Government Election Monitoring – OTI and its grantee, the Campaign for Free and Fair Election (CaFFE), provided information, tools, and resources to ensure citizens in Sri Lanka's Northern and Eastern Provinces were empowered to vote for the first time since the country's long-running conflict ended. CaFFE launched an island-wide media campaign to educate voters and worked with local authorities to provide temporary identification documents to eligible voters who had lost their identification cards due to natural disaster, conflict, or displacement. The organization also monitored and observed all aspects of the balloting for 234 local government elections on March 17. CaFFE was assisted by staff and volunteers trained as part of an OTI activity in support of electoral processes. The initiative facilitated the participation of more than 100,000 people in eight districts, and a follow-on effort is planned for the Northern Province districts of Jaffna, Kilinochchi, and Mullaitivu, areas where local government elections were postponed.
Program Appraisal
OTI assumed responsibility for the Sri Lanka program in February 2010 and expanded the program's geographic scope of operations soon thereafter. Since that time, grant development activities have increased dramatically. During this period of growth, OTI has continually monitored the operational context and program methodologies. OTI held the RISEN program's first Strategy Review Session in mid-2010 to identify strategic locations for initial programming in the North and also to reevaluate areas of focus in the East. In March 2011, staff conducted a Management Review, examining program systems, processes, and management practices. And in May, the program underwent a Program Performance Review, enlisting independent evaluators to assess activities and provide recommendations for tuning program strategy and implementation.
The RISEN program has prioritized known resettlement areas, particularly isolated areas with histories of forced recruitment and displacement. RISEN has identified the youth of Sri Lanka as change agents in these areas and developed multiple activities to empower young people to become successful and effective leaders in their communities.
The program has also worked to mitigate community tensions by building stronger relationships across the Tamil-Muslim divide, and activities have focused on promoting self-awareness and common interests. In addition, RISEN has addressed gaps in access to livelihoods and supported income generation activities to improve the immediate economic security of beneficiaries.
Capacity development continues to be a cross-cutting theme in a majority of the program's activities, and many grants aim to improve the capacity of local authorities to provide services. Projects also seek to engage community-based and civil society organizations in activities and enhance their abilities to advocate for their communities.
Heavy flooding and restrictions on access and travel have hampered efforts to implement various activities. Nevertheless, OTI has dealt with constraints and responded to opportunities with flexible programming. For example, the program took advantage of a window of opportunity presented by the national flood disaster by bringing Sri Lankans from different ethnic groups and far-flung communities together to assist thousands of people in areas inundated by flooding.
Next Steps
OTI priorities for the next quarter include the following:
- Develop and refine the program's regional strategies and tactical approaches to better target programming in the North and the East;
- Improve communications and outreach and articulation of the program's strategic objectives; and
- Look for opportunities to coordinate and link with other USAID programs in Sri Lanka to better leverage resources and increase impact.
For further information, please contact:
K. Santi Duewel, Asia & Middle East Program Manager, 202-712-1605, kduewel@usaid.gov.
|
