Demands for minority protection and the right to self-determination have been the defining features of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict as well as its post-independence debates on state-reform. Over the past decades, successive governments have been confronted with the challenge of recognizing the need to accommodate, in some form, the Tamil demand for self-determination, as well as the call for protection by different ethnic and religious groups.
The panel presentations/discussion will examine the following points:
– the conceptual framework governing the right to self-determination, and ‘internal’ self-determination;
– the right to self-determination in Sri Lanka, and the varied ways in which the concept has been understood and promoted;
– the recent ‘6th Amendment case’, and its implications for minority protection, democratic practice and the future of Constitutional reform within a plurinational state.
Dr. Kalana Senaratne
Mr. Niran Ankitell
Dr. Asanga Welikala