Repatriation of Sri Lankan Refugees in South India

Abstract

During the course of the protracted war in Sri Lanka, several displaced victims of the war entered as refugees and sought asylum in Tamil Nadu state in South India. There are around one hundred thousand of Sri Lankan refugees still living in welfare camps or with their friends and relatives in India. Even though the Sri Lankan government and the UNHCR were willing to provide assistance to these refugees the reports indicated that not many returnees arrived from India in the post-war period. The theory stresses that repatriation of refugees is a significant task of a successful post conflict peacebuilding. The aim of this paper is to look into the process of repatriation during post war period. The primary and secondary data are used to qualitative analysis of this study. Some reasons were revealed by this study to discourage for returning of refugees. First they are still suspect on their own security in the Northern Province. Second problems of livelihood and loss of original lands in resettle process of Sri Lanka have been emerged as key issues to discourage them. Third as an external fact the Tamil Nadu politics also badly affected for repatriation. According to this, there was a poor flow of returning refugees from India, which shows that the entire process of repatriation is problematic. The government should give more attention to solve this problem with the help of the Indian government as well as the UNHCR.