ISHR Works to Build Trust Among Students in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka

by Krisztian Simon

Co-trainers Danielle Goldberg and Bonnie Miller during a Tea Break with participants / Courtesy of Danielle Goldberg

The international human rights and peace-building program of the Institute for the Study of Human seeks to address the root causes of conflict. Its projects use applied research through humanitarian assistance, human rights training, economic development, and political participation. The program provides direct services of education, capacity building and dialogue. Danielle Goldberg, Program Coordinator of the Peacebuilding and Rights Program at ISHR, is coordinating a conflict resolution curriculum project for all incoming college students in Sri Lanka. “Many Sri Lankans have never had the opportunity to have significant personal interaction with people from other linguistic or religious backgrounds. Fear and mistrust are commonplace,” she reports.

In 2009, the Sri Lankan government defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an insurgent group that was fighting for the establishment of an independent Tamil state in the north and the east. A 26-year civil war had claimed an estimated 100,000 lives, and despite an end to the violent conflict, there is still substantial tension between the Tamil minority and the Sinhalese majority. The Ministry of Higher Education in Sri Lanka initiated the conflict resolution program, deciding to add this component to their mandatory three-month pre-orientation consisting of courses on information technology, English and the environment. Because they needed independent experts to help with this program, the U.S. Embassy in Colombo recommended they contact ISHR. At the Ministry’s request, Danielle Goldberg and David L. Phillips, Director of ISHR’s peacebuilding and human rights program, drafted the curriculum entitled, Fostering Social Harmony Among University Students in Sri Lanka. The final curriculum included 11 modules of interactive, hands-on lessons addressing various topics from interpersonal communication, listening skills, mediation, negotiation and problem solving.

In July 2011 Ms. Goldberg, together with co-trainer Bonnie Miller, led a “Training of Trainers” program for 92 participants to prepare them for curriculum implementation with university students. In addition to reviewing the theory and practice of each module, participants examined select activities. Through experiential learning, discussions, role plays and small group presentations, they explored facilitation challenges and best practices. Ms. Goldberg explained that these approaches are particularly important because Sri Lankan students are accustomed to lecture-style courses with minimal student participation. She said that “the activities build a safe environment for them to start appreciating their similarities and differences, and to see each other not as strangers, but as people they can live and work together with.” The program begins with activities like “reach for the stars,” where participants cut out a star, put their name and important aspects of their identity on it, and introduce themselves using these identifiers. They can see what they have in common with their classmates. Later in the course, they begin to address issues of conflict, and practice techniques to resolve conflicts using non-violent methods.

In addition to the pre-orientation programme, there are also ambitious plans to adapt the training into a semester-long course at the University of Jaffna. The Ministry of Higher Education has continued to show interest in making the curriculum an ongoing, mandatory program. Ms. Goldberg envisions that “if the curriculum is implemented with students four years in a row, we imagine the lessons of social harmony and conflict resolution may become an ingrained part of the university culture, since every single student will have gone through the same experience and will share a common language.” She hopes that if students encounter incidents and hostility, they will have the skills and awareness to address them more constructively and prevent them from escalating into violence. ISHR continues to work with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Higher Education to move the curriculum forward, and is also sharing the materials with potential partners in other post-conflict countries to explore the possibility of adapting it for other contexts around the world.

Published in RightsNews Volume 30, no. 2, February, 2012.
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