GENEVA, 26 September 2007 - Almost half a million civilians are still displaced by Sri Lanka's civil war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the warring parties continue to disregard their rights and those of other civilians in the country's conflict areas, according to a report released today by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). The report Civilians in the way of conflict: Displaced people in Sri Lanka describes how many internally displaced people (IDPs) have been forced to return to areas still widely considered unsafe, without having any means of making the decision for themselves.
"The government must do more to involve displaced people in the planning and management of their return, ensuring that returns take place voluntarily, in safety and with dignity", said the Norwegian Refugee Council's Secretary General Tomas C. Archer. Since April 2006, more than 300,000 people have been forced from their homes by the hostili-ties. Despite the government's return programme, Sri Lanka still has one of the largest displaced populations in all of Asia - with some 460,000 people displaced by the conflict adding to those still without a home following the 2004 tsunami. The country's minority Tamil and Muslim groups are disproportionally affected.
The government's return programme may stem from a disinclination to allow another large dis-placement situation to become permanent, and as such it should be welcomed, but the pace of its implementation may actually be endangering the life of the returnees. Many returning IDPs still risk being caught in hostilities or conscripted into armed groups, and so they cannot be consid-ered to have found a durable solution to end their displacement. Even if they are not forced to flee renewed conflict, returning IDPs will face huge problems recovering their livelihoods in the face of the large-scale militarisation of farmland and fishing grounds.
In the course of the conflict, abuses of international humanitarian law have been frequently per-petrated by government forces, the LTTE, and in the east, the Karuna militia group which is re-ported to be aiding the army. These have included the use of civilians as human shields, retalia-tory killings, indiscriminate bombings, abductions and disappearances, all of which have encour-aged people to flee. With aid workers increasingly targeted in the conflict, all parties must also take steps to let humanitarian agencies play an active role in IDPs' return and reintegration.
The report underlines that while all parties share the duty of ensuring that civilians in areas they control can live in safety and dignity, the government must develop and implement a national response to IDPs' needs in line with the United Nations' Guiding Principles on Internal Dis-placement.
For more information, see the full IDMC report at www.internal-displacement.org, or contact Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher at the IDMC in Geneva: tel (41) 22 799 0703, mobile (41)-79 7979 439.