Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has drawn up plans to help millions of people plunged into poverty by the countrys two decade civil war and the December tsunami, with a first-time, UN-backed study identifying the south Asian countrys critical development needs.
The governments Millennium Development Goals Report, which was supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), spotlights the disparity in development and the growing poverty in inland rural areas and the coastal belt affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami. The study will be presented this week to an international aid forum in Kandy in central Sri Lanka.
– There are about 5 million people living in poverty in Sri Lanka, perhaps more, the UNDP said quoting the study, noting that if statistics from districts affected by the two decade separatist war were available, poverty figures would be much higher.
The tsunami killed at least 31.000 people and displaced 1 million from their homes. The ethnic conflict, which began in 1983, killed 65.000 people and displaced 1,6 million – most of them minority Tamils – before a cease-fire was signed in 2002. Until the cease-fire there had been no development in the northeast, home to most of the countrys 3,2 million Tamils.
The government study assesses the UN-target of halving poverty in Sri Lanka by 2015 and will be the yardstick by which the country measures the success of long and short-term strategies.
The World Bank, meanwhile, warned that peace was critical to achieving those goals.
– Achieving a sustainable peace is critical for both growth acceleration and poverty reduction, the bank said, adding that it hoped the meeting in the town of Kandy “will allow the participants to deepen their understanding…of the enduring links between development assistance and the progress of peace.”
Peace talks between the rebels and the government broke down in April 2003 over rebels sweeping demands for self-rule, and the process has been complicated by an unprecedented split in rebel ranks in March 2004. Scores of people have been slain since the split.
The survey covers broad areas of development goals with focuses on the economy, aid flows, health and education, water, sanitation and the environment and infrastructure growth.
– Sri Lanka has long been at the forefront of human development among developing countries. Access to health and education is widespread and the results have been impressive, said Miguel Bermeo, the UNDPs resident representative in Sri Lanka.
– But the tsunami disaster and the two-decade internal conflict have raised tremendous challenges, Bermeo said.
The governments focus is on developing housing, roads, railways and other infrastructure and on generating job opportunities. But there has been criticism of the slow pace of building new housing in tsunami-affected areas, and the government and Tigers have yet to sign a deal allowing the guerrillas to receive foreign funding to speed up development.
– Persistent problems dogging the crucial plantation sector, the embattled regions of the north and east and other rural areas are set against a backdrop of steady progress in lowering infant and maternal mortality and achieving significant education goals for children, the UNDP said referring to some of the achievements of Sri Lanka, home to 19 million people.
Despite the slow pace of development on some fronts, the island boasts high literacy rates with some 85 percent of youngsters between 6 and 10 years enrolled in school and high numbers of both girls and boys having access to free primary and secondary education.
Kilde: The Push Journal
