Refugees International is carrying out an assessment mission to Sri Lanka from August 15-27 with a focus on internal displacement as the result of the recent increase in conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). A tenuous ceasefire, which had largely held since 2002, has all but collapsed in recent months, as regular clashes have taken place in eastern Sri Lanka and within the past few days in the area around Jaffna, the major city in the Tamil area in the far north of the country.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 128,800 people have been newly displaced within Sri Lanka since April, including more than 50,000 who fled since the flare-up of violence in Muttur and its surrounding areas in Trincomalee District in early August. A further 6,600 Sri Lankans have fled across the border to Tamil Nadu in India since the beginning of the year. The UN agency is having difficulty assisting displaced people in the north and east of Sri Lanka because their access is restricted in many areas.

RI Vice President for Policy, Joel Charny, is conducting the mission. After meetings with international agencies and local NGOs in Colombo, he will travel to areas affected by the recent violence with the goal of documenting the extent of the recent displacement and identifying ways to respond.

A second purpose of the mission is to attend a consultation in Colombo with organizations that responded to the tsunami in December 2004. RI is one of several agencies involved in a project with former President Clinton’s Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, which is examining the response by non-governmental organizations to the disaster and coming up with recommendations for improving future response in five areas: coordination, accountability, professionalism, building local capacity, and human rights. RI is responsible for the human rights component along with Care USA.