Transitioning with Disability: Justice for Women with Disabilities in Post-War Sri Lanka

Abstract

This chapter maps the conditions within which the human rights of people with disabilities are addressed in the transitional justice context in Sri Lanka, with particular emphasis on rural and (more directly) war-affected women with disabilities. We argue that at a time when disability is internationally gaining recognition as needing to be addressed for transitional justice to be effectively realised, Sri Lanka is only now beginning to identify disability as relevant to the nation’s post-war stability (Ortoleva, Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review 33: 83–142, 2010). That said, the state’s focus in terms of disability is on the demilitarisation of ex-military personnel, for whom disability is constructed in terms of masculinity and reintegration into society as productive citizens (de Mel, Playing Disability, Performing Gender: Militarised Masculinity and Disability Theatre in the Sri Lankan War and Its Aftermath. In Disability in the Global South, ed. Shaun Grech and Karen Soldatic, Springer, Basel, Switzerland, pp. 99–116, 2016). Using a human rights framework, as recognised in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), this chapter explores the lived experiences of women with disabilities in two intersecting contexts: ‘the rural’ and ‘post-war.’ Drawing upon interviews with women with disabilities from the North Central Province and the Eastern Province in Sri Lanka, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which women with disabilities are subject to multiple forms of discrimination, are systematically disempowered and ignored by the Sri Lankan legal system, have no access to effective administrative or judicial remedies, and enjoy only minimal assistance from the state through various welfare programmes.