A comparative study of psycho-social rehabilitation programmes of war-affected children in war-torn Sri Lanka, 2004-2006

Abstract

This research explores psycho-social rehabilitation for war-affected children with special reference to the Sri Lankan civil war during the period of 2004-2006. The main purpose of this study is to examine the role that psycho-social programmes have for war-affected children in Sri Lanka, and what they can play in rehabilitation and reconciliation. A special effort was made to identify how these programmes worked in freeing the children from the effects of war - mainly the efforts they took to enhance the natural environment around the children, and create ethnic harmony among them. Accordingly, two major research questions were addressed by this study: 1.What are the fundamentals of each rehabilitation programme in relation to overall scope, operation, approaches and methodologies?; 2. What are the similarities and differences between each of the rehabilitation programmes? In order to address these two main research questions a theoretical framework was built, using both inductive and deductive dimensions. Three psychosocial rehabilitation programmes, which were operating within Sri Lankan war-torn society were selected. This study has adopted a comparative approach in order to compare these three programmes with each other. The thesis employed semi-structured interviews supplemented by observations and ladder-of-life technique in order to collect data. Fieldwork was carried out in Batticaloa district from 2004 to 2006, located in the Eastern province and Vavuniya district in the Northern Province – two of the worst war affected areas. This study’s findings revealed that psycho-social rehabilitation programmes have a significant responsibility along three main avenues in order to address the war-affected children’s needs properly. These are: 1. identifying children who really need psycho-social assistance; 2. financial and human resource adequacy; 3. utilizing diverse approaches and methodologies according to the target children’s needs and situations. At the same time, this study further highlighted that four components should be fulfilled in order to have a favorable impact of rehabilitation on children: 1. the fulfillment of basic needs; 2. empowerment through education and reconciliation; 3. re-building the social context; and 4. children’s psychological development. Thus this study provides a broader understanding of how micro-level rehabilitation programmes operate in war-affected areas in Sri Lanka. Especially, this study highlighted how concepts of psycho-social rehabilitation and of social context get connected to each other in a war context in a developing country.