P. N. Singham

Singham is changing the refugee camp model in Sri Lanka by permanently resettling those displaced by decades of armed conflict. Based on a model of integration, rather than isolation, his approach has brought dignity to the internally displaced people, and challenged the prejudices of the communities in the resettlement areas.

Singham is integrating displaced people back into Sri Lankan society by empowering them to start new lives and teaching host communities to welcome them as assets. Through his organization Social, Economical and Environmental Developers, or SEED, Singham finds land and housing for refugees in existing neighborhoods, and provides them with a comprehensive support structure to help them put down roots. Both refugees and the host communities participate in the process, learning to respect each other and breaking the down caste, ethnic, and religious prejudices that have underpinned Sri Lanka’s ongoing civil conflict. By focusing on the most vulnerable members of the internally displaced camps for resettlement, Singham is also challenging a welfare-based aid system that views the poorest, the least-educated, and the disabled as the least-eligible for rehabilitation.

Sri Lanka has a long history of violence stemming from religious, ethnic, and caste-based intolerances. Although the population is mostly Sinhalese, Tamils account for 15 percent and Muslims for six. The largely Hindu Tamils were a preferred minority under the British, and underlying tensions were exploited by politicians after independence in 1948. Armed conflict erupted between the Sinhalese and Tamils in 1983 and with the rise of Tamil militancy in the 1990s, a Tamil-Muslim conflict began that led to the nearly complete displacement of Muslims from the north to other districts. More than 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 1983, and some 800,000 displaced within the country. The majority of the internally displaced reside in spontaneous settlements, but 175,000 are concentrated in welfare camps.

The living conditions within the camps are deplorable, with severe overcrowding, abject poverty, and no opportunities for the youth. Still, for the last fifteen years, the government, the army, militant groups, humanitarian organizations and civil society have all supported confining refugees to camps until a political settlement is reached and there is peace. The camps are a convenient structure for aid distribution, and with their fences and checkpoints, an easy way for the army to keep an eye on people. But for refugees, the camps function as a permanent limbo, leaving them unable to resume their normal lives and completely dependent on handouts. The hardest hit are the single mothers, women-headed households, and families with children with special needs. There are 800 single mothers in the camps in the Vavuniya region alone. Many of these women are war widows or abandoned wives with little education and few assets, struggling to raise large families on meager government rations. And those with special needs children receive no extra support to care for them, and they are either kept at home, hidden from a society that rejects them, or institutionalized, creating an additional burden that makes camp life intolerable.

Government and aid organizations have shied away from permanent resettlement in the hope that the displaced refugees will some day be able to return to their homes. The limited efforts that have been made have met stiff resistance. Host communities resent the newcomers for their differences and the perception that they are sapping limited resources. And the persisting war has bred a culture of mistrust.

Singham saw that a successful resettlement of Sri Lanka’s refugees would require a comprehensive strategy, focusing not only on the needs of the displaced people, but also on the host communities. It would require a safety network and a springboard to help the displaced get off the ground in their new homes, and an inclusive process to build cohesion and give all parties a stake. And it would require consistency and openness to win the people’s trust.

Looking for a structure to start work, Singham found that existing aid organizations were hierarchical, had ingrained biases, were welfare—rather than empowerment-oriented, and were sometimes even corrupt. So he created SEED to start anew, choosing for his logo a coconut seed—a product used and recognized by all Sri Lankans, and a symbol of harmony. He began the project by creating a transparent points-based selection process that gave more weight to the most marginalized, including widows supporting many children, families with disabled or special-needs children, and those with no property, little education or skills, and no relatives. These would be first in line for resettlement. Singham launched the program with ten female-headed households, and used the lessons learned to improve his strategy for subsequent participants.

SEED starts each round of resettlements by negotiating with the government to secure temporary shelters and half an acre of land for every family. The settlers are included in all the decision-making, including location and type of shelter. They also help choose a location for a new community center and children’s play area to be built alongside. In addition to securing housing, SEED works on the economic side to make sure the settlements are sustainable and the families able to support themselves. Even before they move out of the camps, refugees receive training on income generating work, skills enhancement, credit and savings, and environmentally friendly agricultural practices. Access to government programs is arranged once they have moved to their new homes, including six months of food rations. SEED’s specially trained change agents are assigned to groups of ten families each to assist them through three years of resettlement, after which they will have the foundation to move forward on their own. With the fourth round of resettlements completed, a total of over 615 families have now been resettled.

The host community is also included in the resettlement process and invited to take advantage of the programs and facilities that are part of the effort. Existing residents are often as poor as the settlers, and have needs that must also be addressed to prevent the kinds of resource-based conflicts that have occurred in the past. Their caste and other prejudices about the newcomers are also openly discussed in advance, and once the new families are in place, regular community meetings break down barriers and build strong ties. Singham has seen tremendous attitude shifts already, as host families welcome the settlers warmly, and even offer cooked food for their first few days.

To help execute the resettlement and provide ongoing support to the new communities, SEED recruited a team of young staff and volunteers from the displaced families. This provided both employment opportunities for young people, and ensured the staff would have strong empathy with the participating families. Singham provides ongoing training, building participants’ skills and promoting awareness of refugee rights. Over the past nine years, SEED’s staff has grown to fifty.

In addition to housing and economic aid, SEED has developed a number of programs to support the refugees to help them make a new start. SEED’s Women’s Center empowers women to create solutions to many of the pressing problems in their communities, including adult education, human rights, HIV/AIDS, and child and sexual abuse—many of which are considered taboo in this conservative society. SEED also opened an “Empowerment Campus” to integrate special-needs children into the community, provide support for their families, and challenge the negative attitudes that have kept the disabled hidden for so long. The program uses a community-based rehabilitation approach, and brings together government resources, teachers and parents, as well as specially-trained SEED staff. Open to children in both the host and resettlement populations, the program has been a boon for struggling families, and has already become a model for other organizations.

To address food insecurity as well as environmental issues in the settlement communities, Singham also created an organic farm, aimed at teaching more sustainable techniques and showing farmers that it is possible to make a diversity of food grow in dry soils. The greenness of his farm compared to the rest of the arid landscape is convincing, and the farm has been visited by nearby communities and farmers, as well as university researchers and others coming to observe and study Singham’s practices. He is now turning the farm into a training center open to farmers from all over Sri Lanka.

Singham’s ideas have been spreading rapidly in the aid community and beyond, both through word of mouth and his position as chairman of a 38-member consortium of civil society organizations. In an average month, ten delegations visit to learn about SEED’s programs in hopes of replicating what is being done, and the SEED staff has had to develop a special program to manage the flow and minimize the disruptions to their own work. Singham has also taken on interns, many of them professionals, from Asyl-EV, a German self-help organization that helped fund his start.

SEED’s work is supported by refugee-oriented organizations and donor agencies, the government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Singham grew up in Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, which bore the brunt of hostilities between the Tamil militants and the government for over twenty years. At home, his mother took responsibility for bringing up her seven children, with little support from their father, a school principal who was often posted to distant schools. As a boy, Singham rebelled against Jaffna’s conservative and caste-oriented culture, and was beaten by his father for questioning the system. One of his brothers was an alcoholic who traumatized the family, and a feud led Singham to run away at the age of fourteen.

Despite Singham’s early departure, his mother’s suffering had a great impact on him. He understood through her experience what it was like for single mothers to carry the huge responsibility of protecting and nurturing their children with little real authority either inside or outside the home. He felt close to his mother and admired her, and her plight contributed to his determination to improve the lives of women.

Singham joined the student movement in 1973, when the oppression of the government began against the minorities and the armed forces unleashed a reign of terror on youth. By the time he was twenty, the political unrest forced him to seek refuge in Germany. He was arrested upon arrival, and landed in a detention camp in Berlin. In the camp, he and other refugees were treated with disdain. The police often responded with violence to his outspokenness, and he was thrown out of camps twelve times, and eventually lost his benefits as well. He found support in the Asyl-EV self-help group, and began counseling other refugees trying to integrate into German society. However, the racism refugees experienced in Germany increased after the wall came down, as East Germans feared losing jobs to Asians and Africans, and as outsiders, they were afforded few rights. His counseling efforts seemed futile, and in 1995, after fifteen years as a refugee he decided to return to Sri Lanka to work with the internally displaced.

Since his return, Singham has lived on SEED’s organic farm, leading a simple life with his young family. “The farm is so self-sufficient,” he said, “that before long the only thing I will bring from outside will be salt.” He still rides his bicycle or motor bike from one settlement to the other, eschewing the four-wheel drive vehicles that are standard among his colleagues.