Concerns of Youth Affected by Civil Conflict in Sri Lanka
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The situation was not different in Sri Lanka, where more and more civilians were drawn into the conflict. Displacement is a major issue affecting thousands of families belonging to all ethnic groups living in the north and east. Although many displaced persons found their way to foreign countries where they sought asylum, many others became internally displaced, living in refugee camps in and around conflict zones. According to the Ministry of Rehabilitation data, there were over 750,000 internally displaced persons in the northeast in 2000. Given that only a small number of the displaced have been resettled, hundreds of thousands of families continue to live in refugee camps with minimal facilities. Children and youth make up a large proportion of the refugees. They have no access to proper educational facilities and other requirements.
Impact of Conflict on Social Identity Colonial and postcolonial policies have divided Sri Lankan society along seemingly obvious lines of region, language, religion, and ethnicity, often forcing people to choose a side and alienating one side from another. The policy of universal but monolingual education produced a younger generation unable to communicate with any group except those from their own linguistic and regional background. It also forced people to seek employment within areas that spoke their language, reinforcing the ethnicity of particular regions. Multiculturalism was truly available only to the English-speaking urban population, particularly those living and working in Colombo, the commercial capital. Where ethnicity is a major factor behind identity politics, it is exploited by political groups who further reinforce ethnic identity and the construction of imagined history (Thangarajah 2003). War and conflict not only affect notions of ethnicity but also change people’s perceptions of their role in society. This is particularly evident in the case of youth identity as ideas of what is childhood and adulthood change; childhood can end abruptly when children are forced to take on adult responsibilities as armed combatants or primary caregivers in the family (Kemper 2005). Siddhartan (2008) found that in Batticaloa, a conflict-affected district in the northeast, adults perceived young people as being irresponsible in general, while an increasing number of youth considered themselves to be adults assuming adult responsibilities, and many youth expressed the need to change the definition of youth.
Psychological Impacts In conflict areas and for families affected by conflict, the psychological impact can be severe for children, youth, and society as a whole as they