Challenge or Opportunity for Sri Lanka

 Sri Lanka has a number of astute ideas on youth empowerment that could benefit other countries. One example is the model and structure of the Sri Lankan National Youth Parliament and the structure of the Federations of Youth Clubs. Currently, these are two of the best youth engagement, empowerment and leadership models in the world.

Sri Lanka also has the opportunity to use its role as Chair-in-Office of a body comprising 54 nations to actively charter a course of international engagement, building new friendships and alliances and reinforcing existing ones. More important, Sri Lanka can use its leadership to reach out to hostile countries and resolve concerns and misconceptions.

Closely related to this should be a strategy to project the giant strides that the country and its government have made in just four years since the conclusion of the debilitating armed struggle in 2009. The Sri Lankan government would be wise to see the projected presence of more than 3,000 journalists and media personnel not as a challenge, but rather as an opportunity to showcase the country’s strength and resilience.

CHOGM has provided an unprecedented opening for political forces within Sri Lanka to unite in the national interest: The main opposition party, the United National Party (UNP) supports the event. This agreement should be used as a platform for further constructive engagement between ideologically disparate political groups.

In four years, the government of Sri Lanka has embarked upon a massive demining and resettlement process. This was done with the support of international agencies and foreign governments. Today, the demining process is nearing completion and almost all internally displaced persons – around 300,000 people – have been resettled. Psycho-social programs have been established and vocational training centers opened in each welfare village, to fully reintegrate former combatants, among them 595 child soldiers. Loans and employments were also provided.

These efforts have paved the way for the successful holding of council elections in the Northern province for the first time since 1987. This historic political event, which took place in September 2013, saw an impressive voter turnout of 67.52 percent, rekindling hope for empowerment of the nation’s minority communities.

The economic progress and infrastructure development in the Northern part of the country – a previously barren region that was under siege by terrorist elements – has been widely hailed. Inadequate infrastructure had been a considerable bottleneck in the country’s economic progress over the past several decades, especially in the North. The recent development of infrastructure as a means to improve connectivity and reduce the disparities between the South and the North is thus praiseworthy. Since 2009, the country has seen rapid and widespread development within both rural and urban areas.

A re calibration of the power balance and relationships between the Northern and Southern regions is beginning to emerge. Perhaps the potential dividends from hosting CHOGM and its parallel forums will consolidate domestic stability for Sri Lanka once and for all, while boosting its international position.