1. Key development issues and rationale for Bank involvement
1. The Key development issue is to resettle the IDPs currently residing in camps in the Northern Province to their original places of residence, and rapidly restore their social and economic life which was destroyed during the military conflict between the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The emergency project is expected to reach about 100,000 IDPs.
2. The Bank is engaging with the resettlement and recovery process for two key reasons. The first rationale is that the Government has requested the Bank's urgent assistance for rapid resettlement of the IDPs planned under Phases III and IV of its resettlement plan. Phases III and IV includes the resettlement of the IDPs in all the GNDs of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts and in a few GNDs in the other three districts (Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya). In total this includes about 32,300 IDP families (about 129,000 persons). Clearly significant resources need to be deployed to address these issues and it will be unrealistic to expect that the livelihood of the returning IDPs can be restored without adequate attention to putting in place emergency income support and livelihood restoration initiatives and rehabilitating infrastructure.
Since the beginning of September 2009, the Government has engaged extensively with the Bank in seeking support to implement its resettlement plan.
3. The second rationale is that the Bank is the first institution to receive a request from the Government and has been granted access to the project sites and information. The Bank is well placed to assist the Government of Sri Lanka given its world-wide post-conflict reconstruction experience and also previous engagements in the Country when the Bank has been one of the very few agencies operating in the Northern Province even during the height of the conflict assisting the conflict-affected people and returnee IDPs. The Bank pioneered the development assistance to the North-East in 1998 through North-East Irrigated Agriculture Project and this initiative catalyzed follow up development support to the region from other development partners. Some of these operations have been implemented successfully, while some are still ongoing (ex Community Livelihoods in Conflict Affected Areas Project – RAP)1. This project, if approved, could facilitate a space and framework for other development partners, including donors, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to provide much needed assistance to the Government to achieve its development objectives and plans. The Australian Government has recently indicated that it would support the resettlement process using this project as the platform to design its support.
