UK

With cuts to local services, fewer resources for supporting local communities and rising unemployment, especially among the young, many people fear tensions among communities will get worse in England.

It is important that those of us who promote good relations among communities tell local and national decision-makers what works in reducing these tensions.

Six young cross-party Sri Lankan parliamentarians and political representatives visited the UK from 25th February to 5th March 2013 to explore its governance and democracy models, and continue their engagement with UK-based diaspora.

With cuts to local services, fewer resources for supporting local communities and rising unemployment, especially among the young, many people fear tensions among communities will get worse in England.

It is important that those of us who promote good relations among communities tell local and national decision-makers what works in reducing these tensions.

Talk for a Change and International Alert, with funding from Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Oxfam, want to help run workshops across England for practitioners to discuss:

Peacebuilding organisation International Alert yesterday published a new report, Voices across borders, which calls for greater engagement between the UK government and diaspora communities, in order to improve peace and development.

International Alert is calling for greater engagement between the UK government and diasporas, in order to improve peace and development.

‘We should go and see David Cameron about this!’, was the conclusion of the Lancashire youth group taking part in our project, “Promoting Positive Voices in Diaspora Communities”.

In November, International Alert organised a visit of four doctors from the British Sri Lankan diaspora community to Sri Lanka, to learn about the country’s healthcare challenges.

In October, our partner organisation Voices for Reconciliation brought together people from Sri Lanka’s diaspora communities to talk about how their personal identities influence their opinions and understanding of Sri Lanka’s history, and how such identities are shaping the country’s post-war future.

Sri Lankan parliamentarians Honourable Vasantha Senanayake MP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party), Honourable Harin Fernando MP (United National Party), and Mr Raghu Balanchandran (Tamil National Alliance) visited the UK from 25th-31st October 2012 in the second of a series of dialogues between this cross-party group of Sri Lankan parliamentarians, political activists and Sri Lankan diaspora communities in the UK. 

On 28th September, one of our partner organisations Voices for Reconciliation (VFR) took part in a workshop with young people from Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan diaspora community in the UK.

‘Now I see it differently’, said one of the participants on our four-day course on conflict analysis and conflict sensitivity in Birmingham, UK last month.

The event, designed to train and prepare civilians for crisis management missions worldwide, brought together members of EU, UN and OSCE missions in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kosovo and elsewhere.

In the Lancashire mill towns of Brierfield and Nelson, International Alert is training young people in a diaspora community affected by conflict at home and abroad, to be peace advocates.

Nilmini Herath – a member of the delegation of young British Sri Lankan professionals who visited Sri Lanka in March as part of International Alert and the Royal Commonwealth Society's Diaspora Dialogues initiative – shares her experience of speaking in the UK Parliament.