Sri Lanka’s Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Forum

Sri Lanka One-Text Initiative
A Multi-Stakeholder Negotiations and Dialogue

By Hannes Siebert

The Sri Lanka One-Text Initiative was co-founded by the country’s main political parties to facilitate dialogue, strengthen relationships and enable a structured exchange of ideas/options between the nation’s political stakeholder groups. This inclusive forum utilizes the “One-Text” procedure and technology — a multi-stakeholder negotiations and communication tool – to ensure equal and constructive participation of all the parties. One-Text is unique to Sri Lanka as it was developed collectively by the stakeholders themselves based on best practises internationally and in the context of local needs and cultural/political dynamics.

The project developed and created common workspaces, technical committees, negotiations mechanisms and problem solving opportunities for ALL-track level dialogues, while enabling the political stakeholders to generate informed options and proposals that will contribute towards a sustained Track One peacemaking process. This initiative was a significant breakthrough in the country whereby parties – in the absence of a formal peace and negotiations process – joined this inclusive process.

One-Text is a systematic process supporting the national peace and negotiations processes by eliciting the underlying interests and needs of ALL the parties and people, providing the space (physically and virtually) to jointly explore and develop many options for different issues and finally arrive at the `best’ one. The process is called `one-text’ because literally one text is forged — drawn from the different `texts’ (narratives and positions) of the political stakeholders as well as various citizens’ groups.

The participants in this process are Authorized Party Members from each of the major political parties, Local and International Technical Experts (appointed by the parties), Policy Advisors, Party Researchers, Technology Support Consultants, nominated members from Civil Society, and individuals associated with the major political stakeholders. All operational, content and policy matters of this initiative are determined by the participating political parties and organizations.

Apart from engaging the political parties and civil society stakeholders in the process, the initiative provides mechanisms and links between track one, two and three processes and initiatives.

It is essential for any sustainable peace process that the voices of ordinary people be heard and that they feel they are involved or considered in the national processes that will impact on their lives. It is also important that the peacebuilding and conflict resolution capacity of local people be built and strengthened. One-Text is providing support and to several of the country’s main civil society organizations to create this essential component in the peace process to contain violence at local level, prevent incidents from impacting on national negotiations, and engage ordinary people in the peace proces.

Background

Sri Lankans have lived through several phases of multiple peace processes since they first started in 1984 during the pre-Indo-Lanka Accord period. Since then, the country has experienced five peace processes and is about to enter the sixth one. A fundamental characteristic of all of these processes was the tendency of the stakeholders to bargain with each other (the two main protagonists – Government and the LTTE) to achieve their strategic interests. Each of the processes also excluded the other main political stakeholders and opposition parties. Inclusive processes and visible problem solving approaches were absent from most of their dealings.

With this negative bargaining approach, the main parties have tended to play a zero-sum negotiations game, where the discourse is focused only on `solutions’ and `winning’. Few attempts have been made to create enabling processes that could provide a roadmap to find agreed, fair and just outcomes that would meet the expectations of all parties (and, more importantly, ALL the people of Sri Lanka) and provide the foundations for a sustainable peace solution.

Other key elements that were constantly lacking (to mention just a few) were the building of trust between stakeholders; dealing with human rights violations; providing reparations for people affected by the war; expanding ownership of the process to all parties and people who would be affected by the outcome of any agreement; and, lastly, establishing mechanisms that inform and involve the ordinary person in core issues affecting their lives – creating transparent and accountable processes.

This initiative followed the breakdown of talks between the Government and LTTE and the events around the Tokyo Donor Conference in mid-2003. The initial dialogue group consisted of members from the United National Party-led Government (UNP) and the People’s Alliance (PA). This group soon expanded to include the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) and key members from leading Civil Society groups with access to all political groupings – the Center for Policy Alternatives, (CPA), the Bandranaike Center for International Studies (BCIS), the Berghof Foundation and Sarvodaya. The parties’ were interested in using the One-Text process concept and framework to facilitate dialogue between all the parties and to develop, initially, a Track Two-level intervention that could sustain and support Track One negotiations and inform Track Three processes.

After testing the concept and developing an authentic Sri Lankan version of One-Text, the parties decided in January 2004 to institutionalize this informal dialogue process by establishing the Sri Lanka One-Text Initiative. The four main political parties created One-Text as an inclusive, stakeholder driven initiative designed to support the formal negotiations at Track One and the peace process in general.

The process was obviously incomplete in the absence of the two main parties (and the smaller parties with significant contituents) to the conflict — the JVP and the LTTE. In the latter part of 2004, the JVP, JHU and LTTE agreed in-principle to join the initiative. Finally, in January 2005, the LTTE and JVP appointed representatives to the process. Although the JVP nominated their representative, negotiations are still underway to finalise the nature of the appointment.

Vision and Strategy

The main objective of this initiative today is to facilitate processes that will enable all stakeholders in the Sri Lankan peace process to develop common ground for their often opposing positions (searching for common, underlying interests and needs) through problem-solving interventions and information sharing within common spaces;

Create and enable common workspaces, agreed negotiations mechanisms and problem solving opportunities for ALL-Track level dialogues, while enabling the stakeholders in the Sri Lankan conflict to generate informed options and proposals towards a sustained Track One peacemaking process – meeting the needs of ALL Sri Lankans.

· Multi-Track Roles and Linkages:

Apart from engaging the political parties and civil society stakeholders in the process, the initiative provides mechanisms and links between track one, two and three processes and initiatives. This Track 1½ level initiative were designed to sustain and support Track One negotiations, draw on the resources of Track 2 interventions, inform Track 3 processes, and provide linkages between all tracks.

· Startegy:

To resolve the ethnic conflict in a durable and sustainable manner, this process initiative addresses the root causes of the conflict. It uses a structural model to deal systematically with relationship, data, value, structural and interest conflicts.

After eliciting the issues and interests of all the parties, jointly appointed Party Researchers and Technical Committees draft proposals and present it to the parties for their input and criticism. The parties provide additional options and criticize drafts at various stages of the process – until all parties feel they have an inclusive and representative concept paper. Once sufficient consensus is reached between the parties, the work in this process is offered to the Sri Lanka Track One negotiators as resources, guide and means to explore major issues before it reach the negotiations table. Content developed in this process is confidential and is the intellectual property of the parties involved in the process.

Experts and advisors from civil society provide technical input to the technical committees. All approved drafts and joint research papers are distributed to local People’s Forums for comment and suggestions. These comments are included in the final drafts of the agreed documents.

· Participation:

The participants in this process are not volunteers, they are authorized Party Members from each of the major political parties. The Local and International Technical Experts are appointed by consensus of all the parties. All operational, content and policy matters of this initiative are determined by the participating political parties and organizations. Each of the main parliamentary parties appoints two members of parliament or senior party representative as ’stakeholder’; a senior policy advisor and full-time party researcher to the process. All institutional staff appointments are jointly approved by at least three of the One Text political stakeholders.

For technical support and capacity building, four major civil society organisations – Center for Policy Alternatives, the Badaranaike Center for International Studies, Sarvodaya and Berghof Foundation – each appointed a representative to the initiative’s Stakeholder and Management Committees. At Track 3 level, One-Text partnered with five major national organisations to facilitate and coordinate the People’s Forums initiative, linking the national process to ALL districts around the country. The organisations involved in this component of the initiative are Sarvodaya, Foundation for Co-Existence, National Peace Council, Sewa Lanka and National Anti-War Front.

By nature of the ethnic conflict, three peace secretariats exists, representing the Government, LTTE and the Muslim Community. These secretariats also serve on the committees of the One-Text Initiative.

· People’s participation in the process:

It is essential for any sustainable peace process that the voices of ordinary people be heard and that they feel they are involved or considered in the national processes that will impact on their lives. Through the development of national, community-based People’s Forums, One-Text stakeholders strengthened the peace building and conflict resolution capacity of local people. Although supporters of the different parties will never literally sit at the negotiations table, it is critical that negotiators keep their supporters ‘in the loop’ through report backs and ongoing briefings to maintain transparency as the negotiations progress. It is no use for negotiators to arrive at an agreement which may be rejected by their supporters because it was revealed to them only at the close of negotiations.

One-Text is providing support and to several of the country’s main civil society organizations to create this essential component in the peace process to contain violence at local level, prevent incidents from impacting on national negotiations, and engage ordinary people in the peace process.

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