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XIV. International Donors

At the Sri Lanka Donor’s Conference held in Tokyo in June 2003, the international community jointly pledged a total of U.S.$ 4.5 billion in post-war reconstruction and development aid to Sri Lanka.²²¹  The conference was co-chaired by Japan, Norway, the United States, and the European Union.²²²  The Declaration of the Conference explicitly linked the aid to the peace process: “[a]ssistance by the donor community must be closely linked to substantial and parallel progress in the peace progress…in view of the linkage between donor support and peace process, the international community will monitor and review the progress in the peace talks.”²²³  The Declaration went on to list ten objectives and milestones which it would use to measure the progress.  Some of the milestones were ensuring an increase in Muslim participation, rehabilitation of former combatants, and gender equity.  The end of under-age recruitment by the LTTE was set out as a milestone by which the progress of a political settlement would be measured.²²⁴ 

In spite of this explicit linkage, the donors were, until recently, largely silent on the recruitment of child soldiers.  At follow-up meetings to the Tokyo Conference, the donors have encouraged the parties to recommence negotiations and urged them to live up to the expectations of the Tokyo Conference.  This silence was particularly conspicuous during the sudden increase in under-age recruitment following Karuna’s split in April 2004.  This lack of public condemnation by donors, combined with the silence from other actors, allowed the LTTE to continue its practices without fear of meaningful international censure. 

Recently, the donor community has been more vocal, and there have been statements from the co-chairs of the donor conference, the European Union and the United States.  The co-chairs released a statement on June 1, 2004, in which they again reiterated the call for the parties to resume the peace process, and specifically enumerated under-age recruitment as an abiding problem.²²⁵  The United States released a statement on October 1, 2004, in which it called on the LTTE to stop recruiting child soldiers.²²⁶ 

A significant percentage of the reconstruction aid is intended for the war-ravaged North and East.  The donor community must use the leverage it has to pressure the LTTE to stop under-age recruitment.  While the exercise of this leverage must not come at a cost of the humanitarian aid urgently needed in the outlying areas, there are other ways to put pressure on the LTTE.  One possibility is to refuse to fund projects carried out by the TRO, the LTTE dominated agency, unless the LTTE can show substantial progress, measured against established benchmarks, in stopping under-age recruitment.  This need not stop the aid and assistance from getting to people who need it, but it will send a strong message to the LTTE.

The donor community is well-placed to insist that the LTTE abide by its commitments under international law as well as under its own repeated declarations to cease under-age recruitment.  The Tokyo Conference Declaration has provided the space for such an insistence.  Especially while the peace talks are ongoing, the donor community must give serious thought to using its considerable influence to stop child recruitment.