Elusive Economic Peace Dividend in Post-civil war Sri Lanka

What is it about?

This research paper compares and contrasts the post-civil war economic development in the conflict-affected Eastern and Northern Provinces and the Southern and Western Provinces in Sri Lanka. In spite of high economic growth in the conflict-affected provinces, employment generation has been very low; unemployment rates and poverty are very high. Moreover, the ruling party (at the time of the first draft of this paper in June 2014) has lost significant share of its vote received in the recent provincial elections (2012-2014) compared to its share of votes at the provincial elections in the immediate aftermath of the civil war (2008-2010) indicating that the economic growth at national and provincial levels has not filtered down to the households.

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Why is it important?

It is five years since the decisive end of the civil war in May 2009 which has been dubbed a victor’s peace. (Goodhand, 2010)In the aftermath of the civil war, the government’s approach to countering the long festering ethnic conflict in the country has been reconciliation and peace through economic development in the conflict-affected provinces and indeed throughout the country, especially through massive infusion of public capital in economic, physical, and social infrastructure development.This paper would investigate whether such an approach has resulted in real economic peace dividends to the people in the two provinces most affected by the civil war, viz. Eastern and Northern Provinces, and the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. This is the first attempt to investigate the post civil war economic development in the conflict-affected provinces and districts of Sri Lanka. It has been the general practice to investigate postcivil war economic developments at national level with marginal focus on geographical areas directly affected by armed conflict. In this paper the primary focus is on the peripheries that could potentially influence post civil war economic development strategies in other countries as well. Moreover, the micro level secondary dataassembled in this paper could be of immense use to other researchers who could potentially utilise such valuable data in their own studies.

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