federalidea.com

By Jeevan Thiagarajah

Much has been said recently of the ban of TRO in the US and subsequent announcement of a ban in Sri Lanka. A further casualty has been UNICEF. We attempt to bring together some pieces.

I/NGOs are registered by the GoSL under the Voluntary Social Services Act. TRO became one, it so registered in 2002. It became a key actor in a tripartite relationship as determined through the peace talks held following the CFA.

It envisaged: Firstly, recruitment of children under the age of 18 must stop completely; secondly, funding needs to be secured for all the components of the Action Plan, including those which address poverty and lack of educational opportunities that contribute to increased child rights violations; thirdly, families and communities need to be aware of the Action Plan as a mechanism to resolve child rights violations and need to be encouraged to report cases of child labour, under-age recruitment and other rights violations to relevant local authorities and international organisations such as UNICEF.

Under-age recruits

The TRO were responsible for the care and maintenance of transit centres. These centres were to provide temporary care and accommodation for under-age recruits released by the LTTE. The children were to stay in the centres for a maximum of three months prior to returning to their homes and joining education or vocational training opportunities. All three transit centres were to be co-managed by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) and UNICEF.

The Transit Centres initiative is part of a larger programme for Children Affected by War in the North and East. It is an outcome of the Action Plan developed and implemented jointly by the LTTE, Government of Sri Lanka, TRO, and UN agencies such as UNICEF, ILO, UNDP and NGOs to address the needs of children affected by war. This plan addresses a wide range of issues including child rights, education, health, psychosocial needs, vocational training, income generation and other issues of children and their families.

Banning an association

This was not a lone ranger project of the UNICEF. This is the history of the recent TRO/UNICEF relationship which has led to special audits and the like by UNICEF.

The ban of the TRO raises another set of issues. Why and how do you ban an NGO? Even if a fatwa were to be issued, there is no earthly possibility of banning an association of persons working on a specific set of social issues. They can be denied access to an institutional bank account and be denied a registered name and identity.

An NGO has to satisfy specific criteria to be registered. Equally there are conditions which govern the registered NGO. E.g. Bank supervision by the Central Bank did monitor NGO funds. In the process TRO funds would and should have been monitored.

Wrongdoings

It is understood that bank supervision staff visited Kilinochchi to inspect expenses. During a 16 month period from August 2006 investigations have been conducted but light has not been shed on wrongdoing by TRO in terms of use of finances. Wrongdoing would have led to fines being imposed given the 75 million rupees lying frozen.

It is true that the organisation lost several of its staff while suffering physical attack and damage. The loss of lives clearly needs answers on the perpetrators. D.B.S. Jeyaraj laid his finger on the perpetrators some months back.

If the TRO had indulged in mismanagement, the VSSO Act provides for the reconstitution of the top management; it is a remedy which remains not utilised. In the worst case scenario the Registrar of NGOs simply de-registers the organisation. In this case we have resorted to what is known as a ban which procedurally does not make sense. It is so easy to publicly vilify but that much harder to do so within prescribed due processes, a necessity nevertheless.