Sri Lanka: A Forgotten Complex Emergency – Back to War Again

The internal conflict between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has lasted more than 25 years, claimed over 70,000 lives, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.The conflict has often been defined as an ethnic struggle between the predominantly northern Tamil minority – who claim they have been denied their human rights and equitable participation in the country’s governance – and the dominant Sinhalese majority, with the Muslim minority also drawn into the conflict.The result has been a complex emergency and grave humanitarian crisis, compounded by the renewed pursuit by both the government and LTTE of military solutions. Sri Lankan society has been increasingly polarised and radicalised along ethno-political lines, and humanitarian actors are subject to suspicion and hostility.While violations of international humanitarian law and human rights are pervasive and committed by all sides in the conflict, access to the needy population is severely limited and exacerbated by one of the world’s worst security situations for humanitarian actors. By 2008, the International Crisis Group wrote: “The humanitarian crisis is deepening, abuses of human rights by both sides are increasing, and those calling for peace are being silenced.”