Security Watch

by Tejal Chandan

The All Party Representative Committee (APRC) considered to be a potentially promising initiative for peace in Sri Lanka, has found an obstacle in the lack of consensus over the nature of the Sri Lankan State. The APRC was convened by the Sri Lankan President in July 2006. It was mandated with the task to find a political solution to the ethnic conflict through proposals for constitutional reforms with an aim to engage various political parties and arrive at a consensus through deliberations. After 42 meetings in 14 months, the decision to adjourn APRC meetings and no further progress there on has led to the prediction of its demise and the notion that the APRC has failed to evolve anything tangible. On the contrary, the APRC has made considerable progress and arrived at a consensus on various issues. (See Text Box). The issues that remain points of disagreement are the nature of the state i.e. unitary or federal and the re-merger or de-merger of the North and East provinces.

The fundamental question of whether Sri Lanka should continue to be governed from the centre or more power should be devolved to the provinces has remained a point of disagreement for decades denying a lasting negotiated solution. While a unitary government is synonymous to continued Sinhala domination for the Tamils, for the Sinhalese, it is seen as a guarantee for the unity of the country and their majority rule. The Chairperson of the APRC, Prof. Tissa Vitharana tried to bridge this chasm by proposing to leave out both the terms 'unitary' and 'federal' from the Sri Lankan Constitution and instead describing the State as "one, free, sovereign and independent State" which advances a Sri Lankan identity recognizing the "multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi cultural character of the Sri Lankan society". The Vitharana proposals adopted a large part of the Majority Report of the Experts1 Committee which promoted the need for maximum devolution and power-sharing at the centre.

The current roadblock facing the APRC process reminds one of the fate of several past attempts at constitutional reforms, all of which became victims of chauvinistic politics and the lack of consensus among the Sri Lankan leadership. One of the first attempts was made with the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact and later the Senanayake-Chelvanayagam Pact. The abrogation of these pacts sowed the seeds of betrayal and mistrust and led even the Tamil moderates to demand for a free nation. The situation was only aggravated with the 1983 pogrom. J. R. Jayawardene's efforts, first in introducing proportional representation and incorporating Tamil language rights in the Constitution in 1978 and later in devolving powers to provinces and according an official status to the Tamil language under the India- Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987, faced extensive protest from the south and fuelled a Sinhala insurgency. In 1995, Chandrika Kumaratunga along with her constitutional architects, G.L.Peiris and Neelan Thiruchelvam presented a devolution package based on a federal constitution. The proposal was an unprecedented move from the SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) but this process was also short lived. The LTTE on its part carried out political assassinations, virtually eliminating the moderate Tamil leaders, thus, weakening the democratic voices within the Tamils. The Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal was the only instance when LTTE presented a concrete proposal. The ISGA outlined the LTTE position regarding a framework for political solution which however did not refer to LTTE's plans to function within a united country. These proposals were also set aside on the grounds of being outside Sri Lanka's Constitution and laws.

In this dismal background, the positive outcome of the current APRC process amidst tremendous political activity has shown the possibility to evolve a consensus on key issues and propose safeguards against secession. Besides, the Majority Report is considered as the most progressive set of proposals since the Peiris-Thiruchelvam package. However, in seeking a final solution the political scene in Sri Lanka cannot be ignored. The APRC received a boost when UNP (United National Party) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the SLFP effectively bringing two of the largest political parties together in the process. However, the MoU fell apart with a mass cross-over of UNP members into the Government. The UNP stopped attending APRC meetings and set a deadline of August 31, 2007 for a final proposal. Later citing APRC's inability to submit a final proposal within the deadline, the UNP quit the process. Dissent within the SLFP also led to the formation of a break away faction SLFP (M) headed by Mangala Samaraweera, former Foreign Minister which has joined hands with the UNP, reportedly, to topple the Government.

The Government headed by Rajapaksa is supported by the pro-war JVP (Janatha Vimukti Perumuna) and JHU (Jathika Hela Urumaya) and its majority in parliament is based on ethnic minority parties such as the CWC (Ceylon worker's Congress) and SLMC (Sri Lanka Muslim Congress). The pro-war parties have a passionate commitment to the unitary state and their support therefore will come at a price of no accommodation with the forces of Tamil nationalism. The rising cost of living and coming to light of Government extravagances has frustrated several hardcore JVP activists and its core base of trade unions, prompting JVP to carry out protests against the government. The UNP is also said to be engaged in wooing the JVP. The recent announcement by UNP that it will deviate from federalism in resolving the national conflict is seen as a step to muster JVP's support in toppling the government. The military operations on the other hand have increased the sense of insecurity among the ethnic minority constituencies thereby reducing chances of steady support from the minority parties. The government has also to worry about the return of Chandrika Kumartaunga and is concerned that she may lure loyalists and disgruntled elements to break away from SLFP.

With regard to the military operations, Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa declared that a political solution will be possible only after a comprehensive military defeat of the LTTE and victories in the East need to be complemented with victories in the North. There has been a slow but sure military thrust by the Sri Lankan security forces. The Navy intercepted and destroyed three cargo vessels of the LTTE. The Army gained full control of the entire area south of Mannar including Sea Tiger bases in Silvathurai, Arippu and several other areas. The Army also captured LTTE's FDL near Yodha Wewa (Giant Tank) north of Mannar. The pressure may be mounting for the LTTE but the fact that it has not engaged in any major military attacks in the recent months indicates to the fact that they have also not expended vast quantities of ammunition. LTTE's Political Head S. P. Thamilchelvan in an interview to TamilNet stated that the outfit's patience was intentional and it was restricting itself to a defensive war. Incidentally, in the back ground the President's impending visit to New York to address the UN General Assembly Gothabaya Rajapaksa invited the LTTE to the negotiating table. Nevertheless the Government's commitment to a political solution has been questioned. Past experiences of military solutions in Sri Lanka have indicated that the impetus for political reform ends once the Government defeats its opponent.

Deterioration of the human rights situation, executions and rising abductions has also given rise to international pressure. On the eve of Mahinda Rajapaksa's address to the UN General Assembly Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitary Killings stated that the situation in Sri Lanka had erupted into a crisis and extra judicial killings need to be stopped. Earlier in August this year, Sir John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, called the record of the safety of humanitarian workers in Sri Lanka as one of the worst in the world. Currently the UN Special Envoy Manfred Nowak is in Sri Lanka and his visit will be followed by a fact- finding mission by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.

Given the rising costs of living and the war against LTTE the need for a political solution is felt by all sides in Sri Lanka. Two recent opinion polls, one by the Marga Institute in collaboration with the National Peace Council and another by the Centre for Policy Alternatives highlight the growing acceptance of a political solution over the military option. They also indicate the space available for negotiations with the LTTE. The Marga survey was a deliberative poll conducted between May- June 2007 in Ampara in the Eastern Province and 17 other districts from all other provinces excluding the North. The survey largely reflects the positions of the majority and the Muslim community. According to the survey, an assessment of the efficacy of a military solution led 72 percent of the respondents to conclude that a political solution is the best guarantee for a lasting peace. The study further notes that this readiness of 72 percent to "envisage a future where LTTE is part and parcel of a restructured Sri Lankan polity reveals the space available for arriving at a political settlement that has public backing." On the question of devolution of powers, 44.7 percent support the Indian model while only 22.1 percent accept a fully federal system. The CPA opinion poll conducted as part of its study of Peace Confidence Index in June 2007 saw a majority 95.4 percent of Up-Country Tamils, 93.1 percent of Muslims and 52.9 percent of Sinhalas supporting a solution through peace talks. If at this moment in time, a political solution acceptable to ethnic minorities is accepted by the Government, the impetus for peace will lie on the LTTE. Such a proposal can lead to immense pressure on the LTTE from the Tamils and the International community.

Foot Note

1. The Experts Committee was a 17-member multi-ethnic panel of experts formed to provide advice and submit recommendations regarding power sharing and constitutional reform to the APRC. The expert committee produced four different reports. The Majority Report was submitted by 11 members representing the three major ethnic groups. Four other members submitted another report and two others submitted two separate reports.

Text of the APRC Chairperson's Report

by Tejal Chandan and Sankhya Krishnan

Human security in simple terms refers to the well being of the citizen and encompasses economic, environmental, social, political, food, health and community security according to UNDP. Various opinion polls in India seeking to prioritise the public perception of a wide range of security threats have consistently ranked threats relating to human security ahead of threats relating to the security of the state. Human security is not only freedom from war but also the freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom of choice. Safety leads to freedom from fear, while well-being results in freedom from want. Human security is thus also linked to human development.

Civil society plays a critical role in enhancing the various dimensions of human security both directly and indirectly by providing an interface between the public and the two other actors, state and market, and acting as a pressure point on them to display greater transparency and accountability. Civil society's vital role in developing, advocating, building and implementing human security is evident from its involvement in key issues such as governance, human rights, justice, poverty alleviation, empowerment of the underprivileged and peace and stability. Moreover, globalization coupled with enhanced media penetration has rapidly spread knowledge about civil society, which in turn has led to increased appreciation of its role. Conceptually, civil society has emerged as a subject of trans-disciplinary discourse. While community groups, churches, the media or political interest groups have long played an important role at the local and national level, it is the more proactive involvement of the civil society on the global landscape that has gained momentum in recent times. Transnational networks of civil society groups are raising a louder voice as to how governments run countries and how corporations do business. Developing countries are witnessing the growth of an active civil society, which has been beneficial not only for local and national governance but also for enhancing human security.

The Centre for Security Analysis (CSA) has been focusing on issues relating to Civil Society, Security and Governance. As a first step, the CSA organized public lectures from Indian and US perspectives on the subject of Religion, Civil Society and Governance. This was followed by a national seminar on the theme Civil Society and Governance in Modern India. In August 2007, the CSA organised a two day international seminar on the theme Civil Society and Human Security: South and Southeast Asian Experiences to bring together the experiences of civil society in enhancing human security in South and Southeast Asia. The state and civil society work towards providing human security but at different levels. This seminar explored questions such as: How has the relationship between the civil society and the state improved? How has this relationship improved human security? How has it influenced the civil society, the state and human security? How does the civil society cope with regional organisations such as ASEAN and SAARC? How is the relationship between the state and civil society likely to evolve in the age of information technology and the Right to Information? How has the civil society itself undergone a change? How has it coped with the reality of ethnic, religious and other conflicts in the region?

Mr. N. Vittal, IAS, (Retd.), former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, delivered the keynote address at the seminar. He defined civil society in the words of Peter Drucker as the space that exists between the family, the state and the market and that which is non-governmental in nature and is not against the welfare of the citizen. Security, in his words, is related to the needs of the citizens. Quoting from Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he noted the four most important needs are life; food (which includes not only providing food but also access to food); clothing and shelter (which includes environmental security); and employment (which includes economic and financial security). The insurance of these needs is the exercise of security. Religion was one of the first institutions to provide people the guarantee for these needs but as time went by there was a separation between religion and the state. Today when the state fails to provide the basic security the civil society takes over. In the context of globalisation, Mr. Vittal questioned whether the role of civil society was to supplant or supplement the state and set the tone for the deliberations that followed.

Dr. Yashavantha Dongre, Professor, University of Mysore, in his paper Civil Society in India: An Overview, posited that civil society in India is neither a well-defined terrain nor accessible to mere structural, operational and institutional definitions. The pre-colonial setting in India had much greater space for people's (civil society) initiatives and the colonial rule apart from many things brought the 'individual' to the centre stage and made 'rugged individualism' a virtue. The post-independence era has seen greater institutionalization of civil society. In the institutionalised space, the civil society came to include both formal and non-formal (incorporated and unincorporated) entities that play significant roles in reforming and reframing our societal space. In the non-institutionalized space, civil society in India needs to be juxtaposed in terms of religion, caste, class, language and regional contradictions and harmonies. Dr. Dongre addressed the basic questions regarding the contribution of civil society in India, how it brings compatibility between the State interest, individual interest and the interests of the space between the two and the future of civil society in India.

Dr. Joseph Liow, Head of Research, RSIS, Singapore, gave an overview of the civil society in Southeast Asia and explored the role of the civil society in Malaysia. In his paper "Uncivil Society?": NGOs and the Narrowing of Religio-Political Space in Contemporary Malaysia, Dr. Liow noted that the increasingly important role that the NGOs and civil society organizations play in Malaysian politics and society has, to some extent, compelled the Malaysian state to provide room for them to articulate their priorities. In the Malaysian case, it is noticeable that, paradoxically, the proliferation of voices has not really resulted in any discernible expansion of the parameters of debate. He added that obvious instances of this paradox can be found in the debates over apostasy, freedom of religion, and the primacy of shari'a in Muslim life as well as the question of moral policing, where a sizeable number of vocal Muslim civil society groups and NGOs have at times championed positions even more hard-line and conservative than those taken by the state. He explained that a close perusal of the dominant civil society agenda in Malaysia offers discourses that in fact impose limits on debates about Islam, unlike Indonesia where a "cultural Islam" emerged in the 1980s and offered a trenchant critique of the prevailing political agenda of the country's Islamist parties and sought to redefine Islam's relations with the state.

The session on civil society and social security covered the issues of social protection from poverty, disability, corruption and unemployment. Dr. Sharit Bhowmik, Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, in his paper Civil Society and Urban Poverty, examined urban poverty in the context of the changing position of labour in the cities and covered the changing employment patterns in the large cities, especially Mumbai, and its effect on housing. Slum dwellers comprise a majority of Mumbai's population and they contribute to its economy in a number of ways. However when urban land is available at a high premium, it is these people who are targeted as the villains responsible for the growing urban crises. Slums are projected as the causes of most, if not all, urban problems. He noted that NGOs have emerged as powerful bodies in influencing the city's bureaucracy and its policies and they have been active in eviction of slums and street vendors, leading to greater insecurity and poverty among the marginalized. Dr. Bhowmik sought to examine how the situation can be altered to have world-class cities for all with inclusive planning for the working poor.

Dr. Mokbul Ahmad, Assistant Professor, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and Mr. Jeevan Thiagarajah, Executive Director, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, Sri Lanka addressed the challenges to civil society in bringing peace in conflict situations. Dr. Ahmad posited that the failure of the state to assist the poor or reduce poverty led to a dramatic growth of NGOs to fill the gap. Some of the activities of the NGOs have been opposed by religious leaders and organisations. Most notably, NGOs involved in micro-credit have been the target of fundamentalists as charging interest is forbidden in Islam. Some NGOs have shown success in promoting human rights particularly women's rights but this too has been accompanied by a backlash from the local elite, religious leaders and organisations. In a country like Bangladesh with 90% of the laws being secular, 87% of the population being Muslim and Islam being the state religion, there are legal problems from unresolved conflicts in the law. Women's independence and women's empowerment programmes are against the beliefs of many orthodox Muslims, but 'gender-development' is a leading concern of Northern donors. Dr. Ahmad suggested that the donors and NGOs need co-operation or at least a non-conflicting attitude from the religious leaders and that the donors and the state in Bangladesh should formulate their policies keeping in mind this problem of the NGOs and their clients in Bangladesh.

Mr. Jeevan Thiagarajah noted that the conflict-affected regions lagged behind the rest of the country in key economic and human development outcomes. He enumerated four pre-conditions for political stability in Sri Lanka including a negotiated political settlement, demilitarization of the conflict, social and economic reconstruction and intercommunity reconciliation. Drawing on Amartya Sen, he said that an adequate concept of human security must place a clear focus on human lives, enlarge the understanding of human rights to include the social dimension, and encompass the role of social arrangements in enabling human security. He called for the development of a common civic culture that would transcend the various ethnic cultures and provide the meeting ground for people to interact across cultural borders, a key requirement for nation-building.

The civil society also plays a critical role in advancing human rights and catering to social justice. The session covering these issues included presentations by Ms. Braema Mathiaparanam, Visiting Research Fellow, ISEAS, Singapore and Dr. Lalit Kumar, Deputy Adviser (Voluntary Action), Planning Commission, New Delhi. Ms. Mathiaparanam noted the need for protection and empowerment of communities to occur from a rights-based approach. She gave an overview of the migrant workers phenomenon and the role of the ASEAN and the individual countries in promoting human rights and stated that although there has not been a clear response with regard to the rights of the migrant workers at the ASEAN level, responses from individual countries and groups within them have been more fruitful. Her presentation further exemplified the various civil society organisations (CSO) involved in securing the rights of migrant workers and highlighted the importance of not only public- private partnerships but also CSO unions, employer associations, recruitment agencies, foreign governments and off-shore NGOs. She further highlighted the challenges of tensions between the citizens and migrant workers.

Dr. Lalit Kumar noted that the civil society has been serving as an effective non-political link between the people and the state and has been providing innovative solutions to poverty, deprivation, discrimination and exclusion. Civil society organisations create social capital by binding the village communities as a whole, while working for common developmental causes in the areas of education, health, sanitation, environment or micro-credit. Further, CSOs enhance social justice through the mobilization of citizens to encourage changes in government policy and in business behaviour. In order to empower independent voluntary organisations (VOs), he noted the need for creating an enabling environment for VOs that stimulates their enterprise and effectiveness and safeguards their autonomy. This would enable VOs to legitimately mobilize necessary financial resources from India and abroad, encourage them to adopt transparent and accountable systems of governance and management, and identify systems by which the Government may work together with VOs on the basis of mutual trust and respect.

In the closing session on civil society and governance, Mr. Ramesh Ramanathan, Co-founder, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, Bangalore, noted that India's growing urban population, which would encompass a majority of the country within the next two decades, has brought with it a set of complex challenges, for which we are ill-prepared. In his presentation Civil Society: An Inflection Point in India he stated that in order to address these challenges, we must first come to terms with the phenomenon of urbanization rather than treating it with suspicion. He traced the political apathy of the middle class to the fact that democracy had preceded the emergence of the middle class in India which hence took political rights for granted. However, he suggested that middle class activism through the space of civil society could aggregate into a potent political force and encouraged the concept of the Area Sabha to bring citizens into a formal political process of collective decision-making. He argued that the role of the state as a regulator for the market could also be extended to regulating the functioning of civil society organisations to ensure that they are harnessed towards positive outcomes. He added that civil society organisations could be the catalysts for the deepening of democratic processes in India by adopting an approach of constructive engagement.

The seminar thus covered the subthemes of civil society and governance, social security, human rights and social justice and civil society in conflict situations. The proceedings of the seminar will be published as an edited volume. Keeping in view the growing importance of NGOs in bringing peace, the CSA will organise a seminar specifically covering the theme of Civil Society in Conflict Situations on October 5-6, 2007. India faces a number of internal security challenges across its entire land mass ranging from insurgency movement in Kashmir to the ethnic conflicts in the Northeast and the Naxalite inspired violence spread across various states in the so-called 'red corridor.' The Indian state has used various instruments to address these conflicts including military force, political negotiations and economic packages but with only partial success. If these conflicts are to have a chance of being resolved, a bottom-up approach involving the participation of civil society is equally important.