Building Effective States T hrough Peacebuilding Initiative: Empowering Peace in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Since Sri Lanka has ended the civil conflict in 2009, there have been significant peace initiatives that to address the grievances and the root courses of the protracted armed conflict, while building a sustainable future based on unity and diversity. Meantime, it can be equally argued that the success of the post-conflict recovery in Sri Lanka cannot be achieved alone either state building or peace building process. It requires a holistic approach to peace, security, development and human rights that could strengthen the assurance of sustainable peace and prosperity of the country. Effective state building process is critical in terms of institutional reform that is believed to bring accountability and transparency in governing system of a country. Meantime, nation building and peace building require a collective effort in terms of addressing the socio, economic and political grievances of the conflicting parties and create a platform for dialog that to bring peace and end of future conflict. It is important to understand and work on multiple theoretical aspects that applied in both conflict and post- conflict settings. Sri Lankan post-conflict peace process may need some improvements for these multiple efforts applied at current context. This might improve significant efforts in addressing the grey areas in relevant to the socio, economic and political grievances of the conflict and the reconciliation process that surely boost for empowering peace and effective state-building. Therefore, this research focuses on the grey areas in peace building process in the post conflict setting and accumulates the knowledge among state-building, nation building and peace building to empower peace in Sri Lanka. The conceptual framework of the research is based on both Global Peace Index and the Fragile States Index that to apply the Sri Lankan situation. The research methodology will be a secondary data collection, which are the available sources from news articles, reports, yearbooks and online publications