A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor is part of an 18-person international research network visiting Sri Lanka in January to investigate how peace can be achieved in a post-conflict region. 

Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, assistant professor in the UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs, will head to Sri Lanka Jan. 5-14 as part of the Justice, Conflict and Development Network.

The network’s goal is to understand how peace can be achieved in countries affected by conflict through the study of justice initiatives and economic development in four countries: Colombia, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Uganda. The upcoming trip to Sri Lanka is the third of four planned visits. The network visited Colombia in April and Uganda in July.

“We are looking at societies deeply affected by civil war,” Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. “This project is trying to understand what have been the effects of conflict and what are the justice and economic development needs of these societies that, with the exception of Syria, are emerging from conflict.”

In Sri Lanka, network members will meet in the capital, Colombo, and then visit places deeply affected by the conflict. Sri Lanka was engulfed in a civil war between the government, dominated by the Sinhalese majority, and the Tamil minority in the country’s north and northeast from 1983 to 2009. Government forces seized the last area controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009. The country has been trying to rebuild and heal from the conflict for the past eight years.

“One of the challenges has been that the government’s military victory has led it to largely ignore the economic and political marginalization that led some Tamils to take up arms in the first place. Moreover, the civil war itself created new justice and development needs that are as yet unmet. Yet, these groups share a country and need to find a way to coexist,” Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. “In the northern part of the country, there are tremendous issues that still need to be worked out. During our visit, we will try to understand the continuing consequences of the war in an economic, social, and political sense.

“We want to better understand what has been done to deal with the effects of the conflict. The government, in recent years, has pledged they will prosecute people in the military who engaged in war crimes that targeted civilians. There has been very little progress, however. There are people who lost their livelihoods. How are they rebuilding?”

Another issue facing the people of Sri Lanka is deciding how displaced people can return to their homes.

“In societies that have experienced civil war, we often see issues about land ownership. People may have owned land, and they had to flee or abandon the property, possibly forced to sell it on the cheap,” Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. “Land ownership often becomes highly concentrated. With the war over, people want to go back to their communities and their land, but someone else is on the land now. It’s often difficult for the poorer families to reacquire land ownership. The wealthy owners have often turned it into commercial agricultural operations, often leaving not enough land to grow food.”

The project is headed by Kirsten Ainley, director of the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Additional members of the coalition include professors from around the world, government officials, and members of nonprofit and activist organizations.

The project is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund, which awarded the network a grant in 2016 worth approximately £150,000 British pounds, largely to fund travel for members of the network to research the four countries. The network recently submitted a larger grant to continue their research in additional countries.