The German Development Cooperation (GTZ) is a governmental implementation agency for international cooperation. GTZ operates in around 130 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. In its global activities GTZ mostly operates on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Development and Cooperation (BMZ) but also on behalf of the World Bank, regional development banks, the European Union as well as the specialized organizations of the United Nations. The multi-facetted tasks of GTZ encompass not only the dissemination of knowledge but also the transfer of organizational and business-related know-how. GTZ’s services are increasingly in demand for facilitating dialogue between the state, the economy and the civil society.

The overarching goal of all GTZ activities is poverty alleviation. However, there is an increasing recognition about the importance of peace building measures to be incorporated into development cooperation. Supporting projects in the conflict affected areas of Sri Lanka GTZ has the capacity to develop new fields of expertise by focusing not only on political and constitutional aspects of peace building but also on the role of development interventions in a conflict context.

The bilateral cooperation between Germany and Sri Lanka has a record of more than forty years of successful project implementation and has seen the building up of a close cooperation between Germany and Sri Lankan partner organizations. In accordance with the Poverty Reduction Strategy of the Sri Lankan Government and the poverty alleviation goal of the German development policy the two governments jointly agreed in 2001 upon two focal areas for their bilateral development cooperation. These are to provide support to the following Sri Lankan Government initiatives:

The two focal areas are supported by the ongoing assistance to the educational reform of the Sri Lankan Government. In these complementary areas, the Federal Republic of Germany via GTZ supports a total of 26 projects throughout Sri Lanka.

One of the central objectives of the Government of Sri Lanka is to restore economic growth and thereby effectively create sustainable employment and income. In order to achieve this challenging objective a multiple reform process has been initiated. The pillars of these economic reforms are:

It is a shared view among the German and the Sri Lankan Governments that poverty alleviation will only be successful if sufficient productive and income-generating employment is created. Employment, however, depends on long-term and balanced economic growth driven by a competitive private sector and on the availability of well-qualified people.

GTZ, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, contributes to the following areas of the Sri Lankan Government’s reform agenda:

In the area of regional economic development, the GTZ cooperates with the Regional Economic Advancement Program (REAP) of the Ministry of Plan Implementation. Through years of bilateral development cooperation in the vocational training sector, GTZ has build up a close cooperation with the National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority and the Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka.

To support the educational reform of the Sri Lankan Government in the most effective way the bilateral development cooperation between Sri Lanka and Germany focuses on the Basic Education Sector Program (BESP). The Program was set up in 1998 with the goal of improving the teaching-learning process and to achieve basic competencies at the primary stage. To achieve this objective, BESP works in close collaboration with the Central Ministry of Education as well as the Provincial Ministries of Education and the National Institute of Education (NIE).

The BESP consists of the following four components:

BESP not only contributes to educational reforms which in turn complements the bilateral development cooperation in the economic area but also to the relief, reconciliation and rehabilitation reform framework of the Sri Lankan Government. The basic education for the children in under-privileged areas (BECARE) is such a component of BESP. It was piloted in Vavuniya and will be extended to other parts of the country. Under this project needy Tamil and Sinhala children are selected to carry out activities that will help them compensate for lost education, build confidence, and ultimately enable them to rejoin the educational mainstream and live as normal citizens. Psychosocial counseling plays an important role in these activities.

In accordance with national priorities BESP also supports the strengthening of the use of English as a bridge and mediator language. The encouragement of trilingual ability substantially contributes to the reduction of language usage conflicts and serves as a sign of mutual acceptance. Additionally, themes such as human and children’s rights, and living and working together are increasingly brought into teacher’s training and are introduced into the schools and lives of Sri Lankan citizens.

In the 2001 bilateral negotiations the Sri Lankan and German Government jointly agreed to include the support of the relief, reconciliation and rehabilitation framework as a new focal area in their bilateral development cooperation. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development assigned GTZ with the task of implementing the support provided by the German Government.

The German Government’s approach towards supporting the RRR reform agenda of the Sri Lankan Government focuses on the incorporation of conflict transformation into development cooperation rather than dealing with it in an isolated manner. GTZ’s continuant and widespread representation in Sri Lanka as well as its target group orientation positively contributes towards the highly sensitive issue of conflict transformation.

The contribution of the bilateral development cooperation to the RRR framework is based on a four-folded approach. This includes the following:

The German Government promotes conflict sensitivity within development-oriented rehabilitation projects in the conflict-affected areas of Sri Lanka. As such, the peace-building contributions of projects such as the Jaffna Rehabilitation Project (JRP), the Integrated Food Security Program Trincomalee (IFSP) and the North-East Community Restoration and Development Project (NECORD) are to be strengthened and their direct support towards the RRR Framework increased.

Through its development cooperation, the German Government further aims at embodying crises prevention and conflict transformation as a crosscutting issue in all bilateral development projects in Sri Lanka. Therefore, joint projects geared at economic reforms, such as the Enterprise Service Systems Promotion Project (ESSP - Kandy) and the Sri Lanka-German CEFE Program (Colombo), will also integrate peace and conflict impact assessment into the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their activities.

Strengthening the peace-building emphasis of bilateral projects in areas of educational reform is another field of interventions. Through incorporating the topic of conflict transformation in certain fields of teacher training or through establishing exchange programs for students and teachers, the understanding of the “other” culture may be increased and xenophobic tendencies reduced.

Another program supported by the Centre for International Migration (CIM), a joint cooperation between the GTZ and the German Federal Employment Institute that is placing experienced German and European experts in partner organizations abroad, is building up capacities within Sri Lanka Universities for applied research and teaching on poverty and conflict related topics. The IMCAP program is affiliated to the Development Studies Institute of the University of Colombo, but has also established links to the Eastern University, Batticaloa as well as the Jaffna University.

In addition, the German Government supports the capacity building of Sri Lankan civil society structures for conflict management through the establishment of a Fund for Local Initiatives for Conflict Transformation (FLICT). This new project envisages a joint approach with the Department for International Development of the Government of Great Britain.