International Aid and Human Rights Violations in Sri Lanka

Alarmed by allegations of human rights abuse, several donor countries have recently cut aid to Sri Lanka in an effort to force the government to address their concerns. The United Kingdom (UK) froze aid in May 2007, citing concern that government forces have been responsible for violence against civilians in government-controlled territory. UK officials expect that the decision will demonstrate symbolically that the Sri Lankan government cannot act with impunity. Britain says that resumption of aid will be considered after talks with the Sri Lankan government concerning its human rights record. 

Germany cut aid several months earlier, in October 2006, worried that continuous conflict was preventing implementation of the projects the aid money was intended to support. Germany also urged other donor nations to refrain from making additional pledges to Sri Lanka. 

The United States (US) has partially followed suit, suspending some, though not all, development aid. Citing “a deterioration of human rights on the island”, the US government stressed that the government must rein in paramilitary forces, which are fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) alongside government troops. 

International aid to Sri Lanka 

Though international aid to Sri Lanka as a percentage of GDP has declined over the course of the conflict (from 9% in 1983 to 2% in 1997), the nation still depends heavily on it. In 2006, for example, donors gave a total of $912 million in loans and $301 million in grants. Sri Lanka has seen a resurgence of international aid in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 tsunami; donor assistance rose from $275.7 million in 2000 to $1.2 billion in 2005. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan government says that it expects an additional $4.5 billion over the years 2007-2009, though donors have yet to make pledges. 

Sri Lanka receives aid from a variety of sources, the most significant of which are the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and Japan. Japan alone reportedly accounts for more than 60% of Sri Lanka’s international aid. In addition to Japan, India and China are key bilateral donors due to their regional power and trade ties, respectively. Other bilateral donors, including the US, UK, and EU, have substantially less influence. Generally speaking, Western donors have focused on issues of “human rights, democratisation, and liberalisation” to a greater extent than have Asian donors, who “have been more concerned with geo-strategic interests and trade objectives”—though naturally, geo-strategic interests also underlie many Western donors’ decisions. Nevertheless, explicit discussion of human rights issues on the part of countries like the US and UK has contributed to the belief that Western involvement in the peace process is compromising Sri Lanka’s national sovereignty. As a result, the Sri Lankan government has shown a marked preference for developing ties with non-Western donors. 

While much of the international aid supplied by these nations is closely tied to development projects—a safeguard against misuse—there is nevertheless concern that even apparently innocuous aid could indirectly finance the government’s human rights abuses. Project aid was identified as potentially troubling in International Alert’s 1987 report because it “frees resources that would otherwise be spent upon these [development] projects…enabl[ing] the government to run a larger defense budget than would otherwise be possible”. This realisation has been the catalyst for a re-examination of international aid policies among many of Sri Lanka’s donors. 

In addition to development aid, Sri Lanka receives direct military aid from several nations. The US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, has said that the US is “a strong supporter in assisting Sri Lanka combat terror…by providing training and equipment to help the Sri Lankan military”. Similarly, debates in the British Parliament indicate that “£7 million worth of [UK] arms were licensed for delivery to Sri Lanka in the last quarter for which figures are available” as of May 2007. Recently, Sri Lanka has sought further military aid from the Indian government, and has threatened to approach Pakistan if India is not willing to supply weapons. In fact, India allegedly already supplies the Sri Lankan military with weapons, although the government claims that only training, not equipment, are provided to Sri Lankan forces. Given concerns over the government’s alleged human rights abuses, the continued military funding of Sri Lankan forces by these nations has raised criticism, both from their own citizens and from supporters of the LTTE. 

Sri Lankan government and LTTE opponents 

The Sri Lankan government has expressed disappointment with these developments, portraying the aid freezes as a victory for terrorism. Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona says that the aid suspension “achieves a political and propaganda objective that is essentially in favour of the LTTE”. At the same time, the government has so far avoided expressions of serious concern in an effort to downplay the significance of the aid cut. Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama, of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party, dismissed the news of Britain’s aid suspension, saying that the amount of money involved was “too insignificant to bother about”. 

The widespread sentiment, however, is that the aid freeze is an illegitimate attempt to infringe upon Sri Lanka’s national sovereignty. Some see it as evidence of Western support for the LTTE; an opinion piece in Sri Lanka’s Daily News interpreting the aid freeze as a “great victory” for the LTTE is fairly representative of this sentiment. The aid freeze is also seen as an instance of Western hypocrisy, since the same Western nations that have frozen aid to Sri Lanka denounce terrorism regularly and have labelled the LTTE a terrorist organisation. 

LTTE supporters 

Yet while many Sri Lankan opponents of the LTTE view the aid cuts as a victory for the group, LTTE supporters reject this view, pointing out that Western governments continue to supply the Sri Lankan government with military aid. TamilNet, for instance, claims that British arm sales to Sri Lanka now match Britain’s contributions of tsunami relief aid. In addition, the US has provided approximately $500,000 annually to the Sri Lankan government under the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET), with additional, more variable financing ($1 million in 2006) under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme. Faced with these statistics, many supporters of the Tamils question American and British claims to be cracking down on governmental human rights abuses. Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam asks, "How is one to interpret this other than as support for the Government's military approach?”  

Sri Lankan NGOs 

Sri Lankan human rights organisations, like many of the political and social institutions within the country, tend not to support the linkage of international aid to human rights standards—though for different reasons than the government. While convinced of the importance of upholding human rights standards, these organisations are concerned that tying international aid to such goals is not an effective method of defending citizens against abuses. The Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an association of over 70 Sri Lankan nonprofits, provides valuable insight into Sri Lankan NGOs’ response to the aid freeze, arguing that donors need to “rethink their strategy” if they are to effectively help those in need. Instead of linking aid money to issues, like human rights, surrounding the government-LTTE conflict, the CHA recommends a focus on local concerns such as landlessness, unemployment, and poverty.  

International human rights organisations 

In contrast to the local organisations represented by the CHA, international human rights organisations have lauded donors’ decisions to link aid to human rights benchmarks. Human Rights Watch (HRW), in particular, has been very vocal in supporting international donors’ decisions to freeze aid, and in encouraging other nations—namely Japan—to do the same. An HRW delegation visited Tokyo after the recent decisions by the US and UK to cut aid, hoping to convince Japan, Sri Lanka’s top donor, to follow suit. Japan, however, said it had no intention to suspend or cut its aid to Sri Lanka. 

Historical precedents 

The debate over Sri Lankan aid is not without precedent. In the last several years, aid freezes have been imposed upon countries as diverse as Uzbekistan, Zambia, and Colombia, among others, in response to poor human rights records. While it may be too soon to evaluate the long-term efficacy of these recent precedents, a study of Norway’s 1998 decision to cut all development aid to Ethiopia during its two-year war with Eritrea suggests that aid freezes are not necessarily a useful method of pushing foreign governments to change. The conclusion that “Norway introduced sanctions not primarily in order to influence the course of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, but rather for internal Norwegian reasons” echoes a common criticism of sanctions—that decisions about aid are based on the interests of the donor country, not the recipient. Ultimately, the lessons of this case study of the Norway-Ethiopia aid freeze indicate that “sanctions must be internationally coordinated, [] with clear and limited objectives”. Such lessons will be central for evaluating the efficacy of recent freezes in Western aid to Sri Lanka.

 Human Rights Features