Resettlement of Northern Muslims: A Post-War Development Challenge in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The success and sustainability of any type of post-war development and reconciliation process is highly dependent on its successful mechanism to accommodate the concerns and grievances of all affected parties. It also urges ensuring equity to all affected parties during these processes. However, Sri Lanka’s post-war development and reconciliation process has poorly accommodated many concerns of its ethnic minorities, particularly the Muslims of the northern province. The resettlement of the forcefully evacuated northern Muslims has continued to be a marginalized subject in the postwar development and reconciliation contexts in Sri Lanka. The primary of objective of this study is to review the forceful eviction of northern Muslims in the civil war context, and to examine the nature and the issues of their resettlement in the post-war context. There are number of studies in the related literature that focused on the resettlement of internally displaced people due to violent ethnic conflict and civil war in Sri Lanka. However, the majority of them mainly have focused on the displacement and refugee life of Tamils and their resettlement. There are also several studies that focused on the displacement and the resettlement of northern Muslims. The majority of these studies, however, have mainly focused on economic and social perspectives of their refugee life, i.e., on the issues pertaining to their refugee life in the temporary settlements, relationship with host communities and the related issues. Prior studies have very rarely focused on the development, post-war development and the ethnic reconciliation perspectives of the resettlement of the northern Muslims. This study attempts to fill this gap by addressing the development oriented and ethnic reconciliation-related issues and challenges in resettling the forcefully evicted northern Muslims to their traditional homelands.