Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Ongoing protest against microfinance the latest from Rajapaksas’ support base
M. Champa Irangani is in no mood to celebrate ‘Avurudu’, or New Year, the biggest annual festival that Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community observes mid-April, while Tamils celebrate the Tamil New Year around the (...)
On International Women’s Day (IWD) 2021, in a small tent located at the Polonnaruwa Raja Sabha Mandapaya, women sat down to begin a satyagraha against the microfinance debt that has crippled rural economies and left them helpless. Current statistics say that more than 2.8 million people are (...)
A review of Meena Kandasamy’s ’The Orders Were to Rape You: Tamil Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle’.
Meena Kandasamy’s The Orders Were to Rape You: Tamil Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle contains three narratives; that of the author, the story of ‘a Tamil Tiger’s wife’, and that of a LTTE (...)
“All my experience left me no choice. I had to fight.” —Kokilapathmapriya (Priya) Nadesalingam
The story of one Tamil refugee family, abducted from their Queensland home by Border Force agents three years ago and forced into detention, is now well known. The wilful disregard of their rights and (...)
Findings from Women’s Wellbeing Survey 2019 is only the tip of the iceberg
Despite being the first country in the world to elect a female Prime Minister 60 years ago, Sri Lanka’s current track record in women’s rights and welfare is quite dreary. While over half the country’s population is female (...)
Findings from Sri Lanka’s first dedicated National Survey on Violence against Women and Girls reveal that women in Sri Lanka are more than twice more likely to have experienced physical violence by a partner than by a non-partner.
According to the Women’s Wellbeing Survey conducted by the Census (...)
While the health crisis continues to ravage the country, Sri Lanka cannot ignore the socio-economic inequalities that are widened as a result of the COVID-19 situation. Unsurprisingly, women have received the shorter end of the stick and are more vulnerable to the lasting negative impacts of (...)
“I work every day from 5 a.m. until about 10 p.m. I wake up in the morning, cook for everyone, send them off to work and school, clean, wash clothes, cook dinner, and take care of my parents. This is all just a simple load of work that I am responsible for every day. The rest of my family helps (...)
A year ago, on August 22, 2019, the then Cabinet approved a set of reform recommendations to the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), tabled by the then Ministry of Muslim Affairs in coordination with Muslim Members of Parliament. However, a year later there has been no progress on reforms. (...)
We must acknowledge torture is a problem Laws alone cannot achieve social change Media should not sexualize and infantilize women Nationalism has the power to empower as well as to enslave
The normalization of violence in Sri Lanka is a deep seated social problem, says Ambika Satkunanathan, (...)
“I hated unions,” says Sathya Vani, now Joint-President of Sri Lanka’s Domestic Workers’ Union (DWU). “My parents were part of a union, who did nothing for them. So for a long time I avoided trade unions.”
Vani’s parents work in a tea plantation in the Kandyian hill country. “We saw how our parents (...)
Sri Lankan NGOs and labour unions are pushing for regularisation of domestic labour: contracts, minimum wage, labour rights.
In 2019, the ILO commissioned a research study at the request of the Ministry of Labour regarding the formalization of domestic work in Sri Lanka. The Center for Women’s (...)
In the early 2000s, two alarming stories about the precarious and hazardous plights of domestic workers circulated the plantation community in the Kandy district, eventually reaching organizers at the Ceylon Workers Red Flag Union (RFU). The first was about the death of a domestic worker in a (...)
“Every day I would wake up at 5 AM and fall into bed, exhausted, around 11 PM. Most times I didn’t have the energy to even change my clothes. From the moment I woke up till the moment I slept, it was work, work, work all the time,” Shanthi* told Roar Media.
“I ate leftovers, after the family had (...)
A national debate is brewing around the imposition of the Family Background Report (FBR) that bans women with children under five years from migrating for work overseas. Despite being unconstitutional, violating a woman’s right to mobility, contravening Sri Lanka’s commitments to ratified (...)
After spending nine years waiting for the Marsoof Committee to complete deliberations on reforming the regressive laws, Muslim women and activists brace for more delays as conservative Muslim organisations band together with politicians from the community to try and water down the Committee’s (...)
We are witnessing large protests across the war-torn regions in the north and east, urging the Government to restrict the activities of microfinance companies offering loans to poor women at exorbitantly high interest rates. Women’s groups in other parts of the country are also voicing their (...)
“Fear Allah! Do not do injustice to women and girls in your own community!” was the plea on placards held by many women who stood near Parliament last week, opposing the decision by male Muslim MPs discussing the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) reform report with the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul (...)
The Government of Sri Lanka had planned, that effective from January 2018, all Sri Lankan citizens be required to carry a ‘smart’ e-NIC with biometric details (frontal facial photograph, fingerprints, iris scan), details of profession, address, phone numbers, date of birth, email and civil (...)
In this interview taking-off from the 2018 local government, Rohini Weerasinghe connects the experiences of women in politics to the oldest power structure in the world: patriarchy. She argues there is a correlation between the lack of recognition of women’s economic contribution and their (...)
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