Strengthening the Business for Peace Alliance

Sri Lanka’s violent internal conflicts have consumed vast amounts of government resources and handicapped national development efforts. Whilst the conflicts may not have caused economic recession, they have resulted in lost opportunities, meaning that the economy has not reached its potential. The Cost of War, a research project conducted by International Alert with the MARGA Institute and the National Peace Council, concluded that without the war, direct foreign investment would have been five times what it has been and there would have been over 1 million tourists each year, creating 100,000 jobs. In addition, many people have fled the country, costing the country in economic as well as human terms – the cost of migrating professionals is estimated at over Rs 100 billion.

The business community therefore has a vested interest in peace – and is a powerful force for change. The Business for Peace Alliance (BPA) is a working group of thirty-six business leaders that we have supported since 2002. Representing 18 chambers of commerce from all over the island, it is grounded in the various local communities and can represent their different interests. Discussing each other’s problems and experiences of the conflict has greatly reduced anti North-South sentiments and increased the members awareness and understanding of conflict causes and impacts beyond ethnic divides.

The BPA seeks to identify ‘what business can do for peace and what peace can do for business’ – and then devise practical initiatives to achieve this. Some recent examples of this include:

• ‘Peace Visits’ designed to replicate the reconciliation and cooperation that the BPA has provided for its members. The BPA acts as a coordinator for members of regional business chambers who wish to visit other areas of the island in order to unite areas previously separated by conflict. The visits have a business focus i.e., sectoral matching for investors, suppliers, and distributors, but also promote understanding and reconciliation.
  
  
• Production of an island-wide directory of regional business, in an effort to unite regional business people. The Directory was distributed in September 2004 in partnership with the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry Sri Lanka.
  
  
• Coordination of bi-annual Domestic Investor Dialogues in Colombo which bring together key policy leaders, the BPA and non-BPA chambers to discuss current business, development, and peacebuilding issues.

Local business, grounded in the community, has an important part to play in rebuilding Sri Lanka post-tsunami, and in ensuring that this is done in a conflict-sensitive way. We now intend to build on our work with the BPA and other Sri Lankan partners to coordinate the peace and development needs of different communities and communicate these to policy makers in Colombo, both within the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE. We will also continue to play an accompanying role as the network develops, providing technical assistance and training in skills such as understanding conflict and what the concepts of peacebuilding and reconciliation mean.

Links

• Click here to download a summary of The Cost of War (this will open in a new window).
  
  
• Click here to download a copy of our report on corporate social responsibility in Sri Lanka, which provided the foundations for a training programme implemented by us and our partner organisations (this will open in a new window).
  

For more information contact Mais Yacoub

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Last updated: March 2006