Notable women lawyers speak about the challenges they faced in their professional and personal journeys to success and how they overcame these hurdles. Panel discussion followed by a networking event
Thursday, 10th May 2018, 2.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. at The Royal Mall (No. 18/903, William Goppallawa Mawatha, Kandy)
Email events@corejustice.org or call on 11 257 5603/4 to confirm participation (limited seating available)
Download the flyer: Flyer – Pathways to Leadership – KANDY
Une table ronde consacrée à la situation politique et sociale actuelle de Sri Lanka est organisée à Edimbourg le 26 et 27 mai 2016 par Jonathan Spencer, professeur d’anthropologie à l’Université.
Nous reproduisons ci-dessous le programme provisoire de ces journées d’étude:
Sri Lanka Roundtable (DRAFT PROGRAMME)
Edinburgh 26-27 May, 2016
Thursday 26 May, Techcube, Summerhall (t.b.c)
9.00-9.15 Introduction and welcome
9.15-11.00 Youth and war Isabelle Clark-Decès (Princeton), Youth in the cultural politics of contemporary Jaffna
Dhana Hughes (Durham), Sinhala Youth and Military Enlistment
Giacomo Mantovan (CEIAS/CRH, EHESS) “They were kings…” The farewell to arms of former Tamil Tiger fighters in exile in France
Giyani Venya De Silva (Oxford) Living with continuity, waiting for change: commentaries from students in Colombo
11.00-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45 Gender Asha Abeysekera (Colombo) Balancing Modernity and Morality in the Sinhala-Buddhist Family Exploring the Rhetoric of Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalism
Kristine Hoglund (Uppsalla) Gender and the Pursuit of Justice in Sri Lanka: Testimonies of Peace and Conflict
Jayanthi Lingam (SOAS) Gendered working lives in the post-war transition in Jaffna district, 2009-14
12.45-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.00 Justice and Security Georg Frerks (Utrecht), Rajapakse’s Peace’: The President’s discourse on the post-war situation in Sri Lanka (2009-2015)
Ali Brown (Amsterdam), Human Security in the Era of Sirasena
Gerrit Kurtz (KCL), The evolution of post-war transitional justice in Sri Lanka
3.00-3.15 Tea
3.15-5.00 Transitional Justice and Constitutional Reform: State of Play and Future Prospects Harini Amarasuriya (Open University and Public Representations Committee on Constitutional reform), Alan Keenan (international Crisis Group), Asanga Welikala (CPA and University of Edinburgh), with Christine Bell (University of Edinburgh)
6.00-7.00
7.30 Dinner, Mother India, Infirmary Street
Friday 27 May, Seminar Rooms 1 and 2, Chrystal Macmillan Building
Please note, in the morning we will split the space to run parallel panels in the two rooms. In the afternoon, we will open up the two rooms for our final plenary sessions.
9.00-9.15 Introduction and welcome
9.15-10.45 Work and Livelihoods (Seminar Room 1) Urs Geiser (Zurich)The making of control over land in Wattamadu – local organisations, engaging the state, changing conjunctures
Charles Wilkinson and Maura van den Kommer
(Amsterdam) Living the Uncertainty: Exploring the Effects of the EU Ban on Sri Lankan Fisheries
Joeri Scholtens and Maarten Bavinck (Amsterdam) Facilitating change from the bottom-up? Reflections on civil society efforts to empower marginalized fishers in post-war Sri Lanka
Religion and transition (Seminar Room 2) Mahinda Deegalle (Bath Spa) The Vision and Leadership of the Architect of Yahapālanaya: Venerable Māduluwāwe Sobhita’s Exemplary Role in the Political Transition of Sri Lanka in 2015
Neena Mahadev (Max Planck) Notes on contemporary religio-economic linkages between Sri Lankan & Singapore
Dominic Esler (UCL) Northern Tamil society after the war: the revival of Catholic kūttu in Mannar
10.45-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45 Work and Politics (Seminar Room 1) Sandya Hewamanne (Essex) Neoliberalism’s New Recruits: Tamil Workers, Human Rights Thrashings and ‘Mundane’ Politics in Post-War Sri Lanka
Mythri Jegathesan (Santa Clara) Is a progressive politics possible? Examining the contemporary intersections of industrial sustainability and political shifts in Sri Lanka’s plantation sector
Darshi Thoradeniya (Heidelberg/Colombo) Women Citizens in Welfare State of Sri Lanka
Past and present (Seminar Room 2) Deborah Winslow (NSF) Contexts of Caste
Alessandra Radicati (LSE) Precarious Patriots: Reflections on Past, Present and Future in a Coastal Community
Carolina Holgersson Ivarsson (Gothenburg), Religious identity, nationalism and social media among Sinhala-Buddhist youth
12.45-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.30 Borders and Margins Vagisha Gunasekara,
Prashanthi Rasadhari Jayasekara,
Gayathri Hiroshani, Hallinne Lokuge,
Aftab Lall (Centre for Poverty Analysis, Colombo), Production of Marginality: Findings from a six-year research programme on basic services, social protection and livelihoods in the North and East
Jonathan Goodhand (SOAS/Melbourne), Vagisha Gunasekera (CEPA), Alice Kern (Zurich) and Thiruni Kelegama (Zurich), with Rajesh Venugopal (LSE), discussant, Sri Lanka’s borderlands and frontiers
3.30-3.45 Tea
3.45-5.30 Writing War and After Sunila Galappatti will read from her new book, A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka, and V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthanan will read from her work in progress, The Missing are Considered Dead.
Also in attendance (participating but not presenting): Ashwini Vasanthakumar
(York), Dennis McGilvray (Colorado), Anne Blackburn (Cornell), Rose Fernando (Utrecht), Niels Terpstra (Utrecht), Eric Meyer (INALGO, Paris), Oivind Fuglerud (Oslo), R.L. (Jock) Stirrat (Sussex), Kanchana Ruwanpura (Edinburgh), Anthony Good (Edinburgh), Jonathan Spencer (Edinburgh), Sidharthan Maunaguru (NUS), Tanya Ekanayaka (Edinburgh), Deborah Menezes (Edinburgh)
This is for the refugee mothers whose second name became I-yearn-to-die post-flight.
This is for the refugee mother who could never become a mother because she died too early in transit. This is for the refugee mother who saw her children swallowed by borders. This is for the refugee mother who had a miscarriage because of the stress of fleeing.
see: http://diasporaland.tumblr.com/post/126098219067/refugee-mothers
More than 100 people have been arrested during protests against the gang-rape and murder of a 17-year-old schoolgirl, in the biggest public demonstration recorded in Sri Lanka’s north.
Police fired tear gas and shops, banks and schools were closed on Wednesday as the protests brought Jaffna, the capital of Northern Province, to a standstill.
The protesters demanded that authorities hand over nine men who were arrested and about to face court over the incident.
The victim left for school on Wednesday last week but never arrived.
Sri Lanka’s Trade Union women leaders are a driving force in the lives of working women due to the constant trials and struggles encountered in the workplace. Marred by gender discrimination and sometimes violence women in the past have had to step forward and speak up for their rights. This led to the emergence of trade unions for women particularly in the Free Trade Zone, Fisheries, Plantation and Healthcare sectors.
The film ‘Determining Futures’ looks at the situation of trade union women from across the country. It takes you through the lives of four Trade Union women leaders and how they work towards making a difference in their lives as well others.
via: http://womenandmedia.org/film-determining-futures-women-in-trade-unions-in-sri-lanka/
The study, “Broadening gender: Why masculinities matter – a study on attitudes, practices and gender-based violence in four districts in Sri Lanka” was conducted by CARE International Sri Lanka, under its Empowering Men to Engage and Redefine Gender Equality project and launched in April 2013.
via: http://www.partners4prevention.org/resource/broadening-gender-why-masculinities-matter
The CARE report also shows that the main reason the men conducted sexual violence was because of their “sexual entitlement”, which underpins that the problem lies within the mind-set and perception of Sri Lankan men. According to Rosanna Flamer-Caldera this thinking is also present in the current generation of young men: “They are brought up in houses where their fathers are doing these things to their mothers, abuse have to stop, and until one person in that generation decides to stop it, it will go on from generation to generation.”
via: http://groundviews.org/2015/04/07/rape-and-domestic-violence-in-sri-lanka-triggered-by-a-mind-set/
At the heart of this in-depth ethnographic study lie the daily life situations of tsunami survivors in war-torn, eastern Sri Lanka. Each chapter is built around the empirical themes derived from the stories and recollections of Tamil women and their families during their stay in relief camps, anticipating relocation. The specifics of the socio-cultural context are firmly embedded in the discussions. Ten years after the tsunami, this publication offers a timely contribution to a better understanding of what it means to cope with the combined effects of disaster, war, and international aid in this matri-focal region of the island.
via: http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2601-8/life-beyond-survival
The forthcoming election is the second Presidential election after the war. Since then, the North and East of Sri Lanka has undergone heightened militarisation. Around 89,000 women headed households in the former war areas struggle to address livelihood needs, look after their remaining family and in many cases also look for their missing loved ones. Despite numerous promises, no independent investigation into serious human rights violations has resulted in a successful prosecution and conviction of alleged perpetrators, a sign of the culture of impunity pervasive in post war Sri Lanka.
We, the undersigned women both from Sri Lanka and outside take this moment to call on the candidates to publicly acknowledge the situation faced by a significant number of women across Sri Lanka.
The present regime removed the blindfold of the Goddess of Justice. Today, law, order and justice are just empty words, which like nudity, can be “interpreted” by politicians at will. These actions have serious trickle-down effects, because when these powerful criminals are protected by the law, the rest of society also loses all sense of fear to engage in deplorable acts against helpless women and children. We are seeing these consequences all the time in our society. As women, we cannot ignore this state of affairs any longer. We cannot consider a change as just desirable, it is essential if we are to re-establish morality in society.
Via http://groundviews.org/…/whatever-happened-to-the-respect-…/
Harshadeva Amarathungar discusses the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and its inadequacies in considering gender issues in the post-conflict Sri Lanka.
via: http://www.insightonconflict.org/2014/06/omission-gender-sri-lanka-reconciliation-llrc/
Sri Lanka’s military admitted on Saturday soldiers had abused and tortured female recruits, a rare admission of guilt after years of allegations over its personnel’s treatment of Tamil rebels during an uprising.
via: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/other/2014/03/23/403481/Sri-Lanka.htm
source: www.chinapost.com.tw
In 2009 the government announced that the LTTE has been wiped out from the country with the end of the armed conflict. However, in the past few weeks there have been a number of arrests, including of women under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) supposedly to investigate and counter a renaissance of the LTTE. Most of these arrests were in connection to the search for a man called Gopi who according to media reports quoting military and police spokespersons was killed along with his two associates on 11 April 2014 and that they been buried at state expenses on 12 April in Anuradhapura. Those arrested in connection to these men are still being kept at Boosa camp, in Colombo’s the 2nd and 4th floor of the Terrorism Investigation branch, and in the Vavuniya Terrorism Investigation Division (TID). In these TID and military joint operations men, women, the elderly and children have been arrested.
The Ministry of Women’s and Children’s affairs is mandated to work towards women’s empowerment and equality. However once again it has failed to do so, instead exposing its ethnic, religious and class bias. The Ministry’s opinion that only women working in the field of politics and that too mostly in the ruling party, and government sector are to be considered ‘strong women’ is in line with the overall regressive attitude of the Sri Lankan government towards women and women’s rights.
Via http://groundviews.org/2014/03/07/strong-women-a-book-review/
source: Groundviews
