Abstract:
The Sri Lankan government engaged in a war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE). And they declared the end of the 30 years’ war with LTTE on May
2009. After the end of the war, reconciliation has become the first task of the peacebuilding
discourse in Sri Lanka. Although the civil war has finished through the war
victory, the ethnic conflict is still going on with the absence of physical violation
movements with each other. But there are great possibilities for a restoration of the
civil war. Hence, it is necessary to distinguish the major factors which will lead to a
reproduction of war in the future. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to
identify the challenges and barriers for the reconciliation in the post-war period of Sri
Lanka. This study has used questionnaires to gather the primary data and previous
research, books, online web articles were used as secondary data. The survey was
conducted in the Vavuniya district with a total sample of 100 and it represented
Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim ethnicities. According to the findings, it was found that
the possible factors for the restoration of civil war in the future are the lack of
consensus within the political actors of government regarding the post-war
reconciliation; the lack of confidence among the ethnic groups about the policies of
reconciliation; the contradictory policies among the government, NGOs, civil society
organizations and international community for the reconciliation mechanism; and the
inequalities of government policies regarding language. Although the war has ended,
still Sri Lanka has failed to eliminate the risk of war in the future. Therefore, the lack
of a formal mechanism of national and international policies for the reconciliation
can identify as a decisive factor for the reproduction of civil war in the future.
