Dozens of protesters gathered at two locations Thursday, the second day of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit.
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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and wife, Yoo Soon-taek, with participants at a youth event in Galle, Sri Lanka, on the theme “Reconciliation and Coexistence: Role of Youth”.
The issue of civilian land being held by the military in the North and East seems to be heading towards a final solution following the visit to Sri Lanka by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last week.
A new draft bill is being prepared with the aim of providing provisions to provide ownership of land without being affected by the Land Restriction and Alienation Act of Sri Lanka, Xinhua news agency reported citing a Ministry of Finance statement.
“Many of the Goals focus on priority areas for young people: quality education, empowering women and girls, and ensuring decent work for all”, said Ban, calling on the young people “to lead the way”.
Ban said Sri Lanka was only the latest of a series of United Nations failures in past years, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda for which the United Nations “felt responsible”.
He requested the United Nations chief to give Sri Lanka more time to resolve issues of reconciliation as Sri Lanka country has only recently emerged from 30 years of armed conflict. We repeated again, never again; how many times we should repeat never, never again. “Sri Lanka’s future success depends on you”, he told the gathering.
He said, in recent years, Sri Lanka has emerged as one of the biggest contributors to the youth agenda. “But I decided that in all our operations, thinking and planning the human rights aspect should be up front”.
In his meeting with Sirisena yesterday, Ban expressed his support to the government’s reform programme as well as its reconciliation efforts with the minority Tamils.
Sirisena said in January that all displaced camps in the North will be shut within six months and people will be resettled.
Thousands of victims were displaced by the conflict and the government is now in the process of setting up a domestic process to probe allegations of war crimes during and after the end of the war.
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The Sri Lankan government has said that it will not involve foreign judges.
