'Here we are, Muslim, Hindu and Christian living peacefully together!

With a number of Caritas Sri Lanka's international partners I visited Batticaloa and Kalmunia from 26th to 28th March. We had just attended a bi-annual meeting of their National Peace Programme and this visit was to observe some of the issues the programme was having to address at community level.

Both Batticaloa and the Kalmunai/Ampara Districts are areas where the Tsunami of December 2005 had it's most devastating impact. Many coastal communities were washed away with enormous loss of life and property. In this picture we had a meeting with people in a temporary camp in Kalmunai. Some permanent houses have now been built there by EHED, the Caritas Sri Lankan local partner, but the demand vastly outstrips the available resources. As many know the need is not for money but to make sure that it effectively gets to where it is needed and this is where the local capacity is a problem. Finding the building contractors, sorting out the land/legal issues, separating the genuine beneficiaries from those who see the opportunity to better themselves and finally empowering the communities to manage the process of rebuilding their villages; all these are problems EHED has to deal with which necessarily makes the process of building homes a slow one.

In the community you see in this picture people had gathered to say 'Here we are, Muslim, Hindu and Christian living peacefully together but the time it is taking to help us build new homes is causing conflict between us'. Our EHED colleagues told us that this is natural conflict, between those chosen as the first to benefit, women headed households, or those familes with injured or disabled, and those who may have to wait for one or two years to finally be re-settled. 'Sadly there are always those who can generate envey and bittnerss for political purposes to divide the community', one EHED staff said to me.