Challenges to Peacebuilding Approaches: Analysing Sri Lanka’s Peace Efforts During the First 10 Years Ending the Civil War

Abstract

Sri Lanka’s 26-year long civil war ended with a military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The direct victims of this civil war were mostly the people residing in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of the island. According to data gathered by the state, the impact of the war has been severe and there had been 71,201 war-related deaths between 1983 and 2011 (Department of Census and Statistics, 2011, p. 9). In addition to this, there were 800,000 internally displaced people, 900,000 war-affected children (Husain et al., 2011, p. 523), and nearly 89,000 war widows (Quist, 2015, p. 5).