The Long Struggle for Justice of Tamil Family Members of the Disappeared in Sri Lanka

Published November 1, 2023 Dr Chulani Kodikara
Transformation and Empowerment Sri Lanka

Project: Gender, Governance, and Peacebuilding: Institutional Reform in Jordan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka

A women-led movement continues to demand justice for Tamil victims of enforced disappearance during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Can international law come to their aid? 

War is a site where subjects are made and unmade (Thiranagama 2013). This is, of course, a profoundly gendered process, for war makes and unmakes men and women in different ways. In particular, the imperative to break the silence and to bear witness to the violence of war is often overwhelmingly borne by women. It is perhaps no truer than where disappearances have been used as a tactic of war.

In almost every context where forced disappearances have been or are deployed by the state as a tool of repression, terror, or counterinsurgency, women next of kin of the disappeared have organised into powerful movements demanding truth, justice, and reparations.

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Image credit: International Day of the Disappeared protest in Vavuniya, Sri Lanka on 30 August 2014. Vikalpa | Groundviews | CPA (CC BY 2.0).

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Dr Chulani Kodikara

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