UN Looks, Sri Lanka Ducks

It has now become an annual affair. When the Geneva based UN Human Rights Council readies itself for the first of its annual regular sessions in February, the government in Sri Lanka gets ready to ward off yet another attempt to scrutinise its rights record.

“Censorship by Murder Will Not Silence Truth”

It was almost four o’clock in the morning on Feb. 18, 1990, when Dr. Manorani Saravanamuththu pulled into the driveway of No. 42 Castle Street, an old Portuguese-style home located in a suburb of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

Female Journalists Walk on Eggshells in Sri Lanka

The year was 1998 and porters at the wholesale vegetable market in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo had gone on strike, virtually suspending vegetable distribution in the city and its suburbs.

Rural Water Projects Depend on Women

During the dry season, when dirt roads are cracked from the relentless heat, the sight of women walking miles, balancing pots of water on their heads, is common in rural Sri Lanka.

Between Drought and Floods – A Year of Extremes in Sri Lanka

Wild elephants are usually the primary attraction in the remote shrub jungles of Udawalawe, about 180 kilometres southeast of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo. But this Christmas season, the massive Udawalawe dam stole the limelight from the lumbering beasts.

Funding Shortage Thwarts Reconstruction Efforts

The landscape in northern Sri Lanka’s former war zone can change abruptly from the ordinary to the surreal.

War Widows Struggle in a ‘Man’s World’

Sita Tamang’s husband went missing sometime in 2004, two years before Nepal’s civil war came to an end. A native of Dharan, a town about 600 kilometres southeast of Kathmandu, Tamang waited seven years after his disappearance before she tried to claim compensation offered by the government after a 2006 peace deal ended this country’s bloodshed.

Trawlers Glide Past International Fishing Laws

Somali pirates on the southwest Indian Ocean have become one of the biggest security risks for commercial maritime shipping over the last several years. But even as piracy gave rise to international furore, an unlikely benefactor emerged: bluefin tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean.

War Tourism Skips Reality

The tour guide’s voice echoes around the dark, musty room, three stories underground. Fifty visitors – among them mothers holding infants, youths snapping pictures on mobile phones and grandparents leaning against the walls – are crammed into the narrow stairwell that leads down into the chamber, listening attentively to his every word.

War’s End Threatens Water Supply in Northern Sri Lanka

War is seldom good for anything, especially protracted conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka, which dragged on for over three decades and claimed between 80,000 to 100,000 lives.

Extreme Weather Hits the Poor First – and Hardest

The old adage ‘nature is the great equaliser’ no longer holds true in countries like Sri Lanka, where the poor bear the brunt of extreme weather events.

Three Years of Peace But No Sign of Prosperity

Mamaduwa, a remote village in Sri Lanka’s northern Vavuniya district where scorching winds blow across parched earth, is trying to forget the past.

Abused Children Face Long Wait for Justice

In 2011, 1,463 cases of sexual exploitation of children were reported to the Sri Lankan Police, who found every single complaint to be genuine and opened investigations.

A Plea to a Pirate

The simple sentences six-year-old Minadi writes on paper should delight her mother. Instead, Vilasini Wakwella despairs over their content.

Breaking the Ghostly Silence on Rape

It was the ghostly silence that struck him hardest as he walked through the Colombo suburb of Kirulapone the day after the lifeless body of a six-year-old girl had been discovered floating in a filthy canal, Kumar de Silva, a well-known local media personality, told IPS.

When the Rains Don’t Fall

For many Sri Lankans, the effects of climate change can be summed up in one word: rainfall.

A Grim Search for the Missing

A bloody civil war was reaching its climax but this Tamil family, who had already experienced the conflict intimately, had one last decision to make that would prove to be the hardest one of all.

Shipping Canal Threatens Culture, Ecology, Livelihoods

One hundred and fifty years ago, the British colonial administration in India proposed a shipping canal project that would allow cargo vessels, commercial liners and large ships to cut through the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park in the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka, thereby slashing 424 nautical miles (about 780 kilometres) off the traditional shipping route around Sri Lanka to the Far East.

Sri Lanka Emerges as Launchpad for Human Smuggling

If you hold a Pakistani or Afghan passport, be prepared for an unusually lengthy immigration process on entering neighbouring Sri Lanka. Immigration authorities in the island tell IPS they have set up special procedures to check passengers from these two countries.

Back to the Future With Local Rice Seeds

By coaxing a bumper 3.2 tonnes of rice out of each acre on his organic farm in this district famed for its ancient Buddhist monasteries, Charitha Wijeratne has convincingly proved that using indigenous seeds does not affect productivity.

Indian Ocean Rim Countries Battered by Disasters – Part 2

The heat wave in the Indian state of Orissa, which saw a 10-degree Celsius increase in summer temperatures last month, claimed 21 lives, according to government sources; unofficial estimates counted 87 deaths.