Celebrating Sri Lanka: A Historical Dialogue Project

Context

• The Long Story: 30 years of civil war in the North, failed insurgencies in the South, religious clashes since independence from the British in 1948 after 500 years of colonization

• The short story: Regime change in January brings political will to reconciliation and conflict transformation resulted in renewed interest in Memory Work an Historical dialogue

Recommendations of the LLRC

• “The process of reconciliation requires a full acknowledgement of the tragedy of the conflict and a collective act of contrition by the political leaders and civil society, of both Sinhala and Tamil communities…”

• “Based on testimonies it received the Commission feels that this commemorative gesture, on such a solemn occasion, and at a high political level, will provide the necessary impetus to the reconciliation process the nation as a whole is now poised to undertake…”

GIZ in Sri Lanka

• Priority area: conflict transformation/social integration

• Sectors: – social integration – education – private sector development – vocational training

• GIZ implements projects on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and other partners (EU)

Overall Objective:

• To spur a dialogue on dealing with the past and diversity through recording oral histories, development of a travelling museum reaching out to school and local communities in rural Sri Lanka and establishment of a Peace Memorial in Jaffna.

Specific Objectives:• To incorporate peoples’ perspectives/stories into history-making/writing, thereby

challenging monumental/partial historic narratives • To develop an inclusive historic narrative of Ceylon/Sri Lanka since its

independence, told from a people’s perspective which will contextualize its spurts of cyclic violence

• To change the common misconception of a museum from that of a static storehouse of the past, to a dynamic space of education and transformation

• To create spaces for people-to-people contact and deep dialogue that facilitates empathic understanding of the other, forgiveness and healing

• To provide educational resources to rural communities that will help them contextualize and understand the importance of reconciliation and nation-building

• To promote the respect of other cultures and build consensus on how we live together as dignified citizens

• To memorialize the victims of all violent conflicts in post-colonial Sri Lanka inspiring a commitment to peaceful means of dealing with future conflicts

Partners

• Ministry for National Dialogue, GoSL• Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, GoSL• Ministry of Culture, GoSL• Ministry of Education, GoSL• University of Colombo• University of Jaffna• German Ministry for Economic Development and

Cooperation• European Union

Key Elements of the Project

• Mobile Museum• Oral History Project• Peace Memorial/ Museum in Jaffna

Your inputs welcome to the long journey ahead…