Features
Nihal Jayawickrema discusses the judiciary and human rights with the Anglo American Lawyer magazine
Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama was the Ariel F. Sallows Professor of Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, where he taught both constitutional law and the international law of human rights. He was also Chair of JUSTICE: the Hong Kong Section of the International Commission of Jurists, Executive Director of Transparency International Berlin, Chair of the Trustees of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, London, and a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
A member of the Sri Lanka Bar, he held the offices of Attorney General, and Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice, having been appointed to that office at the age of 32. He was Vice-Chairperson of the Sri Lanka delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and served on the Third Committee which dealt with human rights issues. He is the Coordinator/Rapporteur of the UN sponsored Judicial Integrity Group which formulated the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct and related instruments.
The AAL Magazine: Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama, we are truly honored by your consent to have a conversation with you especially on your book Judicial Application of Human Rights published by the Cambridge University Press which is now on its second edition. You have touched almost all the topics on human rights. I would say a very comprehensive book on human rights covering jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights monitories bodies. One reason is that you have had a long association with law – runs to around five decades – having been a Professor of Law and your abiding interest in promoting constitutional and human rights especially in Sri Lanka. If I may ask Sir, what really inspired you to write a book on the judicial application of human rights?
Dr. Jayawickrama: In 1978, shortly after I resigned from the Ministry of Justice following a change of government, I was asked by Mr. Paul Sieghart, a prominent Barrister in the United Kingdom and Chairman of JUSTICE, UK, whom I knew, whether I would be interested in researching the emerging body of international human rights law for a book which he proposed to write. I would be appointed a Research Fellow at King’s College, University of London, under the supervision of Professor James Fawcett, then President of the European Commission of Human Rights. I was also informed that the University was willing to enroll me to read for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy if I wished to apply the results of my research in an appropriate way. I accepted both offers. My research on the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg institutions and of national courts was incorporated in Paul Sieghart’s pioneering work, The International Law of Human Rights, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1983. My thesis, which critically examined the governance of post-independence Ceylon/Sri Lanka by reference to international human rights standards, was accepted by the University for the award of the degree of Ph.D.
When I was nine years old, my parents were persuaded by my mother’s brother that I should leave my primary school in the southern town of Galle, and continue my education in his old school, Royal College, Colombo. Consequently, I lived in my uncle’s home in Colombo for the next 19 years, until my marriage in 1965. Meanwhile, my uncle who was a Crown Counsel became Attorney-General, Judge of the Supreme Court, and President of the Court of Final Appeal. He was also the President of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists. Justice T.S. Fernando Q.C., had a profound influence on my life. It was at our dinner table that I was introduced to the concept of human rights. His commitment to human rights in whatever capacity he served the State led to my own study of the subject and its application, both in the practice of my profession and in my capacity as the administrative head of the Ministry of Justice.
After I introduced a course on Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong, I found that the international human rights regime had strengthened considerably in the decade following the publication of Paul Sieghart’s book. More than 150 countries, spread over every continent had incorporated contemporary human rights standards into their legal systems. More than 100 countries had ratified the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, thereby enabling their inhabitants to access the Human Rights Committee. Nearly all the countries of South and Central America had subscribed to the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. The resulting jurisprudence had added a new dimension to the concepts that were first articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, Paul Sieghart passed away in 1989. I offered to update his pioneering work, but Oxford University Press was not interested. Cambridge University Press, on the other hand, immediately recognized the need for what they described as “a definitive text on the subject”.
Writing a book which runs into over a thousand pages is difficult to combine with regular teaching at a university, as I soon discovered after I commenced preliminary work on it in Hong Kong. Fortunately, the privilege that the University of Saskatchewan accorded me, by nominating me to the Ariel F. Sallows Chair of Human Rights, enabled me to commence my writing in the exhilarating climate of the Canadian prairies. The first edition of my book was published in 2002, and the second edition in 2017.
The AAL Magazine: Why do you think human rights should be protected by the government and why do you think citizens should pursue their rights if governments have been lethargic on the political will to protect the rights of people?
Dr. Jayawickrama: Respect for human dignity and personality and a belief in justice are rooted deep in the religious and cultural traditions of the world. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all stress the inviolability of the essential attributes of humanity. This religious and cultural tradition was complemented by many strands of philosophical thought that unfolded the concept of a natural law that was equally inviolable and to which all man-made law must conform. Philosophy began transforming into Law in historic documents such as the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. However, it was the Second World War, and the events that preceded it in Germany, and in the territories under German occupation, where unprecedented atrocities were perpetrated on millions of its own people by the regime then lawfully in power, that led to the establishment of a set of superior standards to which all national law must conform – an overriding code of international human rights law.
The Charter of the United Nations was the standard-bearer. The member states of the United Nations have pledged themselves to act, both collectively and separately within their domestic jurisdictions, to secure universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. That is a legal obligation undertaken by the member states of the UN. The people, therefore, have the right to demand of their governments that the basic legal framework be established, and appropriate action be taken, to enable them to exercise and enjoy their fundamental human rights.
The AAL Magazine: The HR jurisprudence you had referred to in your book is quite comprehensive. It covers over 103 countries which is quite an exhaustive exercise. Which jurisdiction did you find most interesting in terms of the articulation of the rights, judicial reasoning or the remedies proposed by the different types of courts eg; in Europe , Latin America, India Australasia, South Africa or any other jurisdiction. You have mentioned that ‘jurisprudence rich in content and varied in flavor, from diverse cultural traditions, has added a new dimension to the concepts first articulated in the UDHR’. Could you please elaborate? Did you identify any methodology which is more prevalent in some jurisdictions but not in others etc.
Dr. Jayawickrama: At the international level, the Human Rights Committee established under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has been the principal source of jurisprudence. At the regional level, the European Court and Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court and Commission of Human Rights have been the principal sources. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has also played a significant role in interpreting and applying the Bills of Rights contained in the constitutions of British colonial territories. At the national level, the Supreme Courts of India and Canada, and the Constitutional Court of South Africa have made unique contributions towards the interpretation and application of civil and political rights. I should, however, mention that the Table of Cases on which I have drawn extends to 140 pages, and these include the decisions of superior courts in over a hundred countries from the Pacific to the Caribbean, and especially the Constitutional Courts in European States, all of which have also contributed to extending the frontiers of human dignity and freedom.
If I may give an example: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed in 1948 that “Everyone has the Right to Life”. Article 6 of the ICCPR required that “This right shall be protected by law”, and that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life”. It recognized the death penalty as an exception and explained the circumstances in which it could be carried out. Of course, some years later, in the Second Optional Protocol, it expressly required the abolition of the death penalty. Meanwhile, through judicial interpretation, the application of Article 6 was extended to cover the unborn child; mentally or disabled persons; the aged, senile, and terminally ill persons; persons in detention; the extradition or deportation of persons; the concept of a healthy environment; access to medical services; war and nuclear weapons; and involuntary disappearances. The Supreme Court of India has described the right to life as taking within its sweep the right to food, the right to clothing, the right to a decent environment, and the right to a reasonable accommodation to live in. That Court also held that the right to life includes the right to livelihood.
The AAL Magazine: As you are well aware, the realization of economic, social and cultural rights are predicated on Government policies. However, reviewing Government policies that are consistent or inconsistent with constitutional principles and obligations under international human rights law is clearly a prerogative of the judiciary. While the judicial activism and attitudes in reviewing Government policy may vary from country to country, I suppose policy review is not policymaking. Do you think by taking decisions based on economic, social, and cultural rights would be seen as being overstepping its constitutional role. How does judicial activism come into play by ensuring such rights are upheld?
Dr. Jayawickrama: International law recognizes not only what may be described as civil and political rights, but also economic, social, and cultural rights. Sri Lanka, as a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, has made a commitment to take measures to progressively achieve the realization of these rights for its citizens. Unfortunately, our Constitution does not recognize these as enforceable rights. Instead, it regards their achievement as “directive principles of state policy” which are not enforceable in any court. These rights are no less important than civil and political rights and are constitutionally protected in many countries.
To give a few examples: The right to work has been interpreted to imply a right not to be arbitrarily prevented from working as, for example, in a country in which the law requires a woman to obtain the permission of her husband in order to work. Also incompatible with this right is the requirement of a female civil servant to resign on marriage. The judicial interpretation of this right has led to the prohibition of forced labour; equitable, just, and reasonable wages; equal remuneration for work of equal value; safe and healthy working conditions; and equal opportunities for promotion. Therefore, I do not agree that the judiciary would be overstepping its constitutional role if it is called upon to monitor compliance by the government of economic, social, and cultural rights that are constitutionally guaranteed. After all, they cover such vital issues in peoples’ lives such as the right to adequate food; freedom from hunger; right to adequate housing; protection from forced evictions; access to sufficient water; right to social security; maternal child and reproductive health; environmental and industrial hygiene; and the right to academic freedom.
(To be continued)
(Mr. Srinath Fernando is the editor of the AAL magazine from which this article was excerpted)
In a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, a woman receives a small but steady sum each month – not wages, for she has no formal job, but an unconditional cash transfer from the government.
Premila Bhalavi says the money covers medicines, vegetables and her son’s school fees. The sum, 1,500 rupees ($16: £12), may be small, but its effect – predictable income, a sense of control and a taste of independence – is anything but.
Her story is increasingly common. Across India, 118 million adult women in 12 states now receive unconditional cash transfers from their governments, making India the site of one of the world’s largest and least-studied social-policy experiments.
Long accustomed to subsidising grain, fuel and rural jobs, India has stumbled into something more radical: paying adult women simply because they keep households running, bear the burden of unpaid care and form an electorate too large to ignore.
Eligibility filters vary – age thresholds, income caps and exclusions for families with government employees, taxpayers or owners of cars or large plots of land.
“The unconditional cash transfers signal a significant expansion of Indian states’ welfare regimes in favour of women,” Prabha Kotiswaran, a professor of law and social justice at King’s College London, told the BBC.
The transfers range from 1,000-2,500 rupees ($12-$30) a month – meagre sums, worth roughly 5-12% of household income, but regular. With 300 million women now holding bank accounts, transfers have become administratively simple.
Women typically spend the money on household and family needs – children’s education, groceries, cooking gas, medical and emergency expenses, retiring small debts and occasional personal items like gold or small comforts.
What sets India apart from Mexico, Brazil or Indonesia – countries with large conditional cash-transfer schemes – is the absence of conditions: the money arrives whether or not a child attends school or a household falls below the poverty line.
Goa was the first state to launch an unconditional cash transfer scheme to women in 2013. The phenomenon picked up just before the pandemic in 2020, when north-eastern Assam rolled out a scheme for vulnerable women. Since then these transfers have turned into a political juggernaut.
The recent wave of unconditional cash transfers targets adult women, with some states acknowledging their unpaid domestic and care work. Tamil Nadu frames its payments as a “rights grant” while West Bengal’s scheme similarly recognises women’s unpaid contributions.
In other states, the recognition is implicit: policymakers expect women to use the transfers for household and family welfare, say experts.
This focus on women’s economic role has also shaped politics: in 2021, Tamil actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan promised “salaries for housewives”. (His fledgling party lost.) By 2024, pledges of women-focused cash transfers helped deliver victories to political parties in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh.
In the recent elections in Bihar, the political power of cash transfers was on stark display. In the weeks before polling in the country’s poorest state, the government transferred 10,000 rupees ($112; £85) to 7.5 million female bank accounts under a livelihood-generation scheme. Women voted in larger numbers than men, decisively shaping the outcome.
Critics called it blatant vote-buying, but the result was clear: women helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition secure a landslide victory. Many believe this cash infusion was a reminder of how financial support can be used as political leverage.
Yet Bihar is only one piece of a much larger picture. Across India, unconditional cash transfers are reaching tens of millions of women on a regular basis.
Maharashtra alone promises benefits for 25 million women; Odisha’s scheme reaches 71% of its female voters.
In some policy circles, the schemes are derided as vote-buying freebies. They also put pressure on state finances: 12 states are set to spend around $18bn on such payouts this fiscal year. A report by think-tank PRS Legislative Research notes that half of these states face revenue deficits – this happens when a state borrows to pay regular expenses without creating assets.
But many argue they also reflect a slow recognition of something India’s feminists have argued for decades: the economic value of unpaid domestic and care work.
Women in India spent nearly five hours a day on such work in 2024 – more than three times the time spent by men, according to the latest Time Use Survey. This lopsided burden helps explain India’s stubbornly low female labour-force participation. The cash transfers, at least, acknowledge the imbalance, experts say.
Do they work?
Evidence is still thin but instructive. A 2025 study in Maharashtra found that 30% of eligible women did not register – sometimes because of documentation problems, sometimes out of a sense of self-sufficiency. But among those who did, nearly all controlled their own bank accounts.
A 2023 survey in West Bengal found that 90% operated their accounts themselves and 86% decided how to spend the money. Most used it for food, education and medical costs; hardly transformative, but the regularity offered security and a sense of agency.
More detailed work by Prof Kotiswaran and colleagues shows mixed outcomes.
In Assam, most women spent the money on essentials; many appreciated the dignity it afforded, but few linked it to recognition of unpaid work, and most would still prefer paid jobs.
In Tamil Nadu, women getting the money spoke of peace of mind, reduced marital conflict and newfound confidence – a rare social dividend. In Karnataka, beneficiaries reported eating better, gaining more say in household decisions and wanting higher payments.
Yet only a sliver understood the scheme as compensation for unpaid care work; messaging had not travelled. Even so, women said the money allowed them to question politicians and manage emergencies. Across studies, the majority of women had full control of the cash.
“The evidence shows that the cash transfers are tremendously useful for women to meet their own immediate needs and those of their households. They also restore dignity to women who are otherwise financially dependent on their husbands for every minor expense,” Prof Kotiswaran says.
Importantly, none of the surveys finds evidence that the money discourages women from seeking paid work or entrench gender roles – the two big feminist fears, according to a report by Prof Kotiswaran along with Gale Andrew and Madhusree Jana.
Nor have they reduced women’s unpaid workload, the researchers find. They do, however, strengthen financial autonomy and modestly strengthen bargaining power. They are neither panacea nor poison: they are useful but limited tools, operating in a patriarchal society where cash alone cannot undo structural inequities.
What next?
The emerging research offers clear hints.
Eligibility rules should be simplified, especially for women doing heavy unpaid care work. Transfers should remain unconditional and independent of marital status.
But messaging should emphasise women’s rights and the value of unpaid work, and financial-literacy efforts must deepen, researchers say. And cash transfers cannot substitute for employment opportunities; many women say what they really want is work that pays and respect that endures.
“If the transfers are coupled with messaging on the recognition of women’s unpaid work, they could potentially disrupt the gendered division of labour when paid employment opportunities become available,” says Prof Kotiswaran.
India’s quiet cash transfers revolution is still in its early chapters. But it already shows that small, regular sums – paid directly to women – can shift power in subtle, significant ways.
Whether this becomes a path to empowerment or merely a new form of political patronage will depend on what India chooses to build around the money.
[BBC]
Some opposition political parties have striven hard to turn the disaster of Cyclone Ditwah to their advantage. A calamity of such unanticipated proportions ought to have enabled all political parties to come together to deal with this tragedy. Failure to do so would indicate both political and moral bankruptcy. The main issue they have forcefully brought up is the government’s failure to take early action on the Meteorological Department’s warnings. The Opposition even convened a meeting of their own with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe and other senior politicians who shared their experience of dealing with natural and man-made disasters of the past, and the present government’s failures to match them.
The difficulty to anticipate the havoc caused by the cyclone was compounded by the neglect of the disaster management system, which includes previous governments that failed to utilise the allocated funds in an open, transparent and corruption free manner. Land designated as “Red Zones” by the National Building Research Organisation (NBRO), a government research and development institute, were built upon by people and ignored by successive governments, civil society and the media alike. NBRO was established in 1984. According to NBRO records, the decision to launch a formal “Landslide Hazard Zonation Mapping Project (LHMP)” dates from 1986. The institutional process of identifying landslide-prone slopes, classifying zones (including what we today call “Red Zones”), and producing hazard maps, started roughly 35 to 40 years ago.
Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines which were lashed by cyclones at around the same time as Sri Lanka experienced Cyclone Ditwah were also unprepared and also suffered enormously. The devastation caused by cyclones in the larger southeast Asian region is due to global climate change. During Cyclone Ditwah some parts of the central highlands received more than 500 mm of rainfall. Official climatological data cite the average annual rainfall for Sri Lanka as roughly 1850 mm though this varies widely by region: from around 900 mm in the dry zones up to 5,000 mm in wet zones. The torrential rains triggered by Ditwah were so heavy that for some communities they represented a rainfall surge comparable to a major part of their typical annual rainfall.
Inclusive Approach
Climate change now joins the pantheon of Sri Lanka’s challenges that are beyond the ability of a single political party or government to resolve. It is like the economic bankruptcy, ethnic conflict and corruption in governance that requires an inclusive approach in which the Opposition, civil society, religious society and the business community need to join rather than merely criticise the government. It will be in their self-interest to do so. A younger generation (Gen Z), with more energy and familiarity with digital technologies filled, the gaps that the government was unable to fill and, in a sense, made both the Opposition and traditional civil society redundant.
Within hours of news coming in that floods and landslides were causing havoc to hundreds of thousands of people, a people’s movement for relief measures was underway. There was no one organiser or leader. There were hundreds who catalysed volunteers to mobilise to collect resources and to cook meals for the victims in community kitchens they set up. These community kitchens sprang up in schools, temples, mosques, garages and even roadside stalls. Volunteers used social media to crowdsource supplies, match donors with delivery vehicles, and coordinate routes that had become impassable due to fallen trees or mudslides. It was a level of commitment and coordination rarely achieved by formal institutions.
The spontaneous outpouring of support was not only a youth phenomenon. The larger population, too, contributed to the relief effort. The Galle District Secretariat sent 23 tons of rice to the cyclone affected areas from donations brought by the people. The Matara District Secretariat made arrangements to send teams of volunteers to the worst affected areas. Just as in the Aragalaya protest movement of 2022, those who joined the relief effort were from all ethnic and religious communities. They gave their assistance to anyone in need, regardless of community. This showed that in times of crisis, Sri Lankans treat others without discrimination as human beings, not as members of specific communities.
Turning Point
The challenge to the government will be to ensure that the unity among the people that the cyclone disaster has brought will outlive the immediate relief phase and continue into the longer term task of national reconstruction. There will be a need to rethink the course of economic development to ensure human security. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has spoken about the need to resettle all people who live above 5000 feet and to reforest those areas. This will require finding land for resettlement elsewhere. The resettlement of people in the hill country will require that the government address the issue of land rights for the Malaiyaha Tamils.
Since independence the Malaiyaha Tamils have been collectively denied ownership to land due first to citizenship issues and now due to poverty and unwillingness of plantation managements to deal with these issues in a just and humanitarian manner beneficial to the workers. Their resettlement raises complex social, economic and political questions. It demands careful planning to avoid repeating past mistakes where displaced communities were moved to areas lacking water, infrastructure or livelihoods. It also requires political consensus, as land is one of the most contentious issues in Sri Lanka, tied closely to identity, ethnicity and historical grievances. Any sustainable solution must go beyond temporary relocation and confront the historical exclusion of the Malaiyaha Tamil community, whose labour sustains the plantation economy but who remain among the poorest groups in the country.
Cyclone Ditwah has thus become a turning point. It has highlighted the need to strengthen governance and disaster preparedness, but it has also revealed a different possibility for Sri Lanka, one in which the people lead with humanity and aspire for the wellbeing of all, and the political leadership emulates their example. The people have shown through their collective response to Cyclone Ditwah that unity and compassion remain strong, which a sincere, moral and hardworking government can tap into. The challenge to the government will be to ensure that the unity among the people that the cyclone disaster has brought will outlive the immediate relief phase and continue into the longer term task of national reconstruction with political reconciliation.
by Jehan Perera
In the short span of two or three days, Cyclone Ditwah, has caused a disaster of unprecedented proportions in our midst. Lashing away at almost the entirety of the country, it has broken through the ramparts of centuries old structures and eroded into areas, once considered safe and secure.
The rains may have passed us by. The waters will recede, shops will reopen, water will be in our taps, and we can resume the daily grind of life. But it will not be the same anymore; it should not be. It should not be business as usual for any of us, nor for the government. Within the past few years, Sri Lankan communities have found themselves in the middle of a crisis after crisis, both natural and man-made, but always made acute by the myopic policies of successive governments, and fuelled by the deeply hierarchical, gendered and ethnicised divides that exist within our societies. The need of the hour for the government today is to reassess its policies and rethink the directions the country, as a whole, has been pushed into.
Neoliberal disaster
In the aftermath of the devastation caused by the natural disaster, fundamental questions have been raised about our existence. Our disaster is, in whole or in part, the result of a badly and cruelly managed environment of the planet. Questions have been raised about the nature of our economy. We need to rethink the way land is used. Livelihoods may have to be built anew, promoting people’s welfare, and by deveoloping a policy on climate change. Mega construction projects is a major culprit as commentators have noted. Landslides in the upcountry are not merely a result of Ditwah lashing at our shores and hills, but are far more structural and points to centuries of mismanagement of land. (https://island.lk/weather-disasters-sri-lanka-flooded-by-policy-blunders-weak-enforcement-and-environmental-crime-climate-expert/). It is also about the way people have been shunted into lands, voluntarily or involuntarily, that are precarious, in their pursuit of a viable livelihood, within the limited opportunities available to them.
Neo liberal policies that demand unfettered land appropriation and built on the premise of economic growth at any expense, leading to growing rural-urban divides, need to be scrutinised for their short and long term consequences. And it is not that any of these economic drives have brought any measure of relief and rejuvenation of the economy. We have been under the tyrannical hold of the IMF, camouflaged as aid and recovery, but sinking us deeper into the debt trap. In October 2025, Ahilan Kadirgamar writes, that the IMF programme by the end of 2027, “will set up Sri Lanka for the next crisis.” He also lambasts the Central Bank and the government’s fiscal policy for their punishing interest rates in the context of disinflation and rising poverty levels. We have had to devalue the rupee last month, and continue to rely on the workforce of domestic workers in West Asia as the major source of foreign exchange. The government’s negotiations with the IMF have focused largely on relief and infrastructure rebuilding, despite calls from civil society, demanding debt justice.
The government has unabashedly repledged its support for the big business class. The cruelest cut of them all is the appointment of a set of high level corporate personalities to the post-disaster recovery committee, with the grand name, “Rebuilding Sri Lanka.” The message is loud and clear, and is clearly a slap in the face of the working people of the country, whose needs run counter to the excessive greed of extractive corporate freeloaders. Economic growth has to be understood in terms that are radically different from what we have been forced to think of it as, till now. For instance, instead of investment for high profits, and the business of buy and sell in the market, rechannel investment and labour into overall welfare. Even catch phrases like sustainable development have missed their mark. We need to think of the economy more holistically and see it as the sustainability of life, livelihood and the wellbeing of the planet.
The disaster has brought on an urgency for rethinking our policies. One of the areas where this is critical is education. There are two fundamental challenges facing education: Budget allocation and priorities. In an address at a gathering of the Chamber of Commerce, on 02 December, speaking on rebuilding efforts, the Prime Minister and Minister of Education Dr. Harini Amarasuriya restated her commitment to the budget that has been passed, a budget that has a meagre 2.4% of the GDP allocated for education. This allocation for education comes in a year that educational reforms are being rolled out, when heavy expenses will likely be incurred. In the aftermath of the disaster, this has become more urgent than ever.
Reforms in Education
The Government has announced a set of amendments to educational policy and implementation, with little warning and almost no consultation with the public, found in the document, Transforming General Education in Sri Lanka 2025 published by the Ministry of Education. Though hailed as transformative by the Prime Minister (https://www.news.lk/current-affairs/in-the-prevailing-situation-it-is-necessary-to-act-strategically-while-creating-the-proper-investments-ensuring-that-actions-are-discharged-on-proper-policies-pm), the policy is no more than a regurgitation of what is already there, made worse. There are a few welcome moves, like the importance placed on vocational training. Here, I want to raise three points relating to vital areas of the curriculum that are of concern: 1) streamlining at an early age; relatedly 2) prioritising and privileging what is seen as STEM education; and 3) introducing a credit-based modular education.
1. A study of the policy document will demonstrate very clearly that streamlining begins with Junior Secondary Education via a career interest test, that encourages students to pursue a particular stream in higher studies. Further Learning Modules at both “Junior Secondary Education” and “Senior Secondary Education Phase I,” entrench this tendency. Psychometric testing, that furthers this goal, as already written about in our column (https://kuppicollective.lk/psychometrics-and-the-curriculum-for-general-education/) points to the bizarre.
2. The kernel of the curriculum of the qualifying examination of Senior Secondary Education Phase I, has five mandatory subjects, including First Language, Math, and Science. There is no mandatory social science or humanities related subject. One can choose two subjects from a set of electives that has history and geography as separate subjects, but a Humanities/Social Science subject is not in the list of mandatory subjects. .
3. A credit-based, modular education: Even in universities, at the level of an advanced study of a discipline, many of us are struggling with module-based education. The credit system promotes a fragmented learning process, where, depth is sacrificed for quick learning, evaluated numerically, in credit values.
Units of learning, assessed, piece meal, are emphasised over fundamentals and the detailing of fundamentals. Introducing a module based curriculum in secondary education can have an adverse impact on developing the capacity of a student to learn a subject in a sustained manner at deeper levels.
Education wise, and pedagogically, we need to be concerned about rigidly compartmentalising science oriented, including technological subjects, separately from Humanities and Social Studies. This cleavage is what has led to the idea of calling science related subjects, STEM, automatically devaluing humanities and social sciences. Ironically, universities, today, have attempted, in some instances, to mix both streams in their curriculums, but with little success; for the overall paradigm of education has been less about educational goals and pedagogical imperatives, than about technocratic priorities, namely, compartmentalisation, fragmentation, and piecemeal consumerism. A holistic response to development needs to rethink such priorities, categorisations and specialisations. A social and sociological approach has to be built into all our educational and development programmes.
National Disasters and Rebuilding Community
In the aftermath of the disaster, the role of education has to be rethought radically. We need a curriculum that is not trapped in the dichotomy of STEM and Humanities, and be overly streamlined and fragmented. The introduction of climate change as a discipline, or attention to environmental destruction cannot be a STEM subject, a Social Science/Humanities subject or even a blend of the two. It is about the vision of an economic-cum-educational policy that sees the environment and the economy as a function of the welfare of the people. Educational reforms must be built on those fundamentals and not on real or imagined short term goals, promoted at the economic end by neo liberal policies and the profiteering capitalist class.
As I write this, the sky brightens with its first streaks of light, after days of incessant rain and gloom, bringing hope into our hearts, and some cheer into the hearts of those hundreds of thousands of massively affected people, anxiously waiting for a change in the weather every second of their lives. The sense of hope that allows us to forge ahead is collective and social. The response by Lankan communities, to the disaster, has been tremendously heartwarming, infusing hope into what still is a situation without hope for many. This spirit of collective endeavour holds the promise for what should be the foundation for recovery. People’s demands and needs should shape the re-envisioning of policy, particularly in the vital areas of education and economy.
(Sivamohan Sumathy was formerly attached to the Department of English, University of Peradeniya)
Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.
By Sivamohan Sumathy
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Midweek Review6 days agoHouse erupts over Met Chief’s 12 Nov unheeded warning about cyclone Ditwah