Help at last for Sri Lanka war

widows

Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN

Like many women, Kulasekran Kugamathi lost her husband during Sri
Lanka's civil war

By Amantha PereraVAVUNIYA, 13 May 2015 (IRIN) - Almost six years after Sri Lankas bloody
civil conflict came to an end, an underreported legacy of the fighting is
finally being acknowledged: the extraordinarily high number of war widows
struggling to make ends meet.
Sri Lankas new government, led by President Maithripala Sirisena,
estimated last month that Northern Province, which bore the brunt of the
three decades of conflict, has an astonishing 50,000 families headed by
single women.
It is the first time anyone has attached a figure to the phenomenon and it
could have profound implications for government policy.
It has remained a huge problem since the end of the war, said Roopavathi
Ketheeswaran, the top public official in Kilinochchi district, which forms part
of Northern Province and used to be the stronghold of the Tamil Tiger

rebels. (It is) a problem that had gone largely unaddressed because of lack
of resources.
Yogeshwari Ramalingam, a 39-year-old widow from neighbouring Mullaithivu
district, is trying to put her three children aged eight to 14 through
school. But it is tough going.
During the war, my husband went missing, she told IRIN. He went
looking for food and never came back, since then I have been struggling.
Peace as scary as war
The family home was hit by shelling during the war, but Ramalingam cant
afford to rebuild it. When she returned to her village in 2011, she received
around $189 from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. It was meant to help the
family to resettle, but after spending about $50 on roofing materials and
the rest on food, the money was soon gone.
Since then, Ramalingam has been surviving by doing odd jobs in the village
and traveling 20 kilometres out to work in the paddy fields during rice
harvesting seasons. She was given some vocational training in embroidery
by a local, church-based NGO, but has been unable to use her new skills
because of the lack of employment opportunities.
It has been hard, very hard. I thought the war was the nightmare. Peace
has been equally scary.
New approach
The government, which took office in January, has signaled a new approach
to addressing the divisive issues that still linger, long after the end of the
civil war, including the parlous situation facing women in war-ravaged
Northern Province.
At least one in five families in the north is led by
My husband went
a woman with no husband, according to official
looking for food and
estimates.
never came back
The government has already announced the establishment of a national
centre in Kilinochchi to look after the needs of such families and has now
introduced low interest loans of up to $260 specifically for these women.
This is the first time such a centre has been set up, so now we can look at
this unique group and provide targeted assistance, Ketheeswaran said,
adding that the biggest problem was lack of jobs. To that end, we will also
provide tailor-made vocational training, she said.

There have been very few programmes designed to help the war widows to
date. Since the start of 2013, the International Committee of the Red Cross
has provided 435 women with funds of up to $378 to start new businesses.
While the grants are welcome, that number represents only a small fraction
of those needing help.
No jobs
While the national unemployment rate for women is 6.6 percent, the
unemployment rates among females are higher in the north, said
Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, author of a research paper on the issue due to
be published in June.
Female unemployment rates in the five districts that make up the Northern
Province are 10.9 percent in Jaffna, 29.4 percent in Kilinochchi, 21.6 percent
in Mannar, 20.5 percent in Mullaithivu and 9.0 percent in Vavuniya.
The districts with the highest figures above 20 percent are those where
the fighting was fiercest. By comparison, the unemployment rate for
women in Colombo is 3.2 percent, 7.0 percent in Galle and 6.8 percent in
Kandy.
The government could give priority for single female heads of families in
recruitment to the public sector, Sarvananthan suggested.
Social workers in the north say that poverty forces many women to leave
their potentially vulnerable children behind as they seek jobs further and
further away from their villages.
There are children dropping out of school. There are frequent cases of child
abuse. There is also underlying trauma that has not been treated, said
Saroja Sivachandran, who heads the Jaffna-based Centre for Women and
Development, which provides vocational training.
There have also been cases of women resorting to prostitution, though no
official figures are available.
Numbers unknown
For a long time after the war, the plight of war widows was a taboo subject
because it was linked to the sensitive issue of those still missing or
unaccounted for, Sivachandran said.
The Sri Lankan government has never confirmed the number of deaths
during the final and deadliest phase of the war.

An advisory panel set up by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said

there could have been at least 40,000 war-related deaths between 2008
and 2009. A recently published book by the University Teachers for Human
Rights (Jaffna) put the figure as high as 90,000.
Although there is no gender breakdown in these figures, it is assumed the
vast majority were men. A generation of war widows was created, and the
women left largely to fend for themselves.
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