Photo courtesy of Nena News For Mosab Abu Toha He has never visited Yaffa, home of his grandfather, just forty miles away across No Man’s land and the border fence. He has not seen the Wailing Wall, stepped on the cobblestones of old Jerusalem. He is Palestinian and Israel does not give him a visa or a laissez-passer. He was ...
Photo courtesy of France 24 Sri Lanka stands at a critical juncture in its political and economic history. As the country prepares for the parliamentary elections on November 14 with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party, the National People’s Power (NPP), projected to make significant gains and expected to win, the direction of the nation’s governance hangs in the balance. If ...
Photo courtesy of Tamil Guardian The interim NPP government wants to make negotiated changes to the IMF conditionalities already agreed upon by the previous regime. If that is not feasible, the NPP will have to move away from the thinking that any deviation from the IMF prescribed debt restructuring would further damage the country’s economy. Otherwise the NPP will have ...
Photo courtesy of Minority Rights Group Tamil politics in Sri Lanka has entered uncharted territory. The cracks in Tamil politics had been evident for some time but with the September 21 presidential elections, it has broken into fragments. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake received little support from the Tamil electorate but so did the candidate endorsed by the Tamil Nationalist Alliance’s ...
Photo courtesy of Foreign Policy The victory of the NPP at the recent presidential election has changed the political landscape of the country. It has given rise to the expectation of a novel and fundamentally different approach towards governance. The electorate expects the government and the state to move away from an autocratic, nepotistic and militaristic approach, which was the ...
Photo courtesy of Global Press Journal This article attempts to critically examine the contribution of transgender men to the transgender movement in Sri Lanka. It analyses the marginalisation faced by transgender men in the current context of transgender rights activism and LGBTQI+ rights activism in general. I take recent discourse around the contribution of transgender men toward the transgender movement ...
Photo courtesy of The Conversation As defined by the United Nations International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a child is any person under the age of 18. This period of life for any child is supposed to be marked by safety, love and development. However for many children, these formative years are marred by abuse – an ...
Photo courtesy of Lifestyled Islander Sri Lankans views of the country’s direction improved dramatically in the Institute for Health Policy (IHP) SLOTS polling for September 2024. In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, a net 43% of the public thought the country was heading in the wrong direction. This reversed after the election with a net 5% of ...
Photo courtesy of Nishan Perera This year marks a significant milestone for Sri Lanka’s biodiversity conservation ambitions – three decades of commitment to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since its ratification after the Rio Earth Summit. In line with the CBD, Sri Lanka is currently in the process of updating its National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plan (NBSAP) for 2024 ...
Photo courtesy of Zaineb Akbarally As Sri Lanka gears up for the parliamentary election on November 14, the topics for debate are depressingly familiar – bringing criminal politicians to justice, ascertaining the responsibility for the Easter Sunday attacks, the best path to economic recovery and how to combat corruption. Yet little is said about the perilous state of the country’s ...
Photo courtesy of The Union Democrat The recent incidents reported in the Sri Lankan media regarding youth suicides have revealed that the mental and emotional wellbeing of our children is in serious decline. This a global phenomenon, with adolescents all over the world experiencing high levels of stress. My thoughts expressed in this article are general observations and in no ...
Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera You say we are all traumatized by this genocide, that we are responsible as well, that we cannot hide under books or pillows from drones, fighter jets and two thousand pound bombs. But what can we do with the fat slices of pie served in these fifty states? Who shall we heal with comforting lullabies ...
Photo courtesy of Sri Lanka Guardian “The future is cloth waiting to be cut.” Seamus Heaney (The Burial at Thebes) The point had been made often enough. Without a Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency, there wouldn’t have been an Anura Kumara Dissanayake presidency. For the NPP/JVP to go from 3 percent to 42 percent in four plus years, the system had to ...
Photo courtesy of Foreign Policy “Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.” (Lenin) “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk.” (General Alexander Haig, American Secretary of State) It is little over one year since Hamas fired those deadly rockets on Israel as mark of its violent struggle to liberate Gaza from Israel’s brutal ...
Photo courtesy of Ceylon Independent Seetha is an elderly woman who takes care of her three grandchildren, all below the age of 15. She lives in a section of her late daughter’s house, where the electricity has been disconnected for the past three months due to non-payment of arrears. She earns a living by selling manioc chips and earns about ...
Photo courtesy of ABC News Today is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty Poverty and malnutrition are interconnected issues that continue to affect millions worldwide and Sri Lanka is no exception. In recent years, global poverty levels have faced setbacks after decades of progress. The World Bank updated the global extreme poverty line to $2.15 per person per day ...
Photo courtesy of BBC Naming the names of the dead is an important act of memorialisation; for those they leave behind, it is their names that contain their essence. Palestinians in Gaza are writing the names of murdered family members on the ruins of their homes to mark their graves under the rubble because Israeli bombardment prevents the recovery of ...
Photo courtesy of Haribunda Sri Lanka has a storied history filled with a rich tapestry of socio-cultural narratives around how people experience themselves and the world around them. Stories carried through lineages, passed on by our ancestors, embedded in the cellular makeup of those of us currently inhabiting the world are those of resilience, spirituality, family and community. However, imprints ...
Photo courtesy of Ceylon Today At the cusp of a significant political transformation, Sri Lanka stands at a crucial juncture in its history with an opportunity to reclaim and redefine its place among the community of nations. In the first part of my analysis in this series, I explored the roots of the political transformation both in terms of the ...
Photo courtesy of Citrus County Chronicles For the first time in history, the Sri Lankan people have elected a leftist as their president. The left, with its long history, has sought power through both armed insurrections and the electoral path. For decades, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the left was not even seen as a serious actor ...
