“It’s 2015” – The Return of Trudeaumania
Picture courtesy cbc.ca Trudeau mania is back, albeit another kind at this different time. Now it is Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada from 1968-79 and again 1980-84. …
International Relations
As Canada Goes to the Polls
Picture courtesy the Prime Minister’s Office of Canada. I write this on the day of elections in Canada, a country excited about change after a dark period of conservative rule. I have…
Sri Lanka’s Domestic Probe & India, the US and China
The fourth US sponsored Resolution to the UNHRC Sessions in Geneva concedes the SL government could conduct its own investigations into “alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes”…
Troubling, The U.S. Declaration of Independence
Modern, recent, European, the concept of the human being as a rights bearing subject dates only from around the seventeenth century. This in itself isn’t troubling. (Europe has given us good things:…
Sri Lanka’s emergency assistance to Nepal and return of exiled journalists
Photo courtesy Asianews.it Sri Lankan government has announced that it had dispatched emergency supplies and support personnel to Nepal a day after the devastating earthquake and that there would be further materials…
Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers: Reflections from visit to Sri Lanka
Photo by DushiYanthini Kanagasabapathipillai I first visited Sri Lanka in 2003. I took leave from the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship for a short humanitarian stint with a Sri Lankan NGO during…
Dealing with two Asian superpowers: President Sirisena’s visit to China
Image courtesy Asia One Sri Lanka stands to benefit enormously by dealing positively with the two Asian super powers, India and China. The two countries are potential rivals. The two Asian whales…
The other side of Narendra Modi’s Sri Lanka visit
Photograph via Quartz Ever since becoming the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy, Narendra Modi has concentrated on building strong diplomatic ties with foreign nations. The process began with the swearing-in…
FM Samaraweera Calls for Patience on Human Rights Front and Improved Sri Lanka-USA Relations
Photo courtesy MFA Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in his first visit to Washington, D.C. after assuming office addressed a full-house gathering at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) on…
Sri Lanka’s geopolitical importance to the United States
Image courtesy California Bangla During late January and early February 2015, Sri Lanka witnessed the visits of many foreign officials to the country. Prominently featured among them were the visits of the…
Charting a New Course: Sri Lankan Foreign Policy
Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images, via Time There could not have been a better time to be a student or a professional of International Relations in Sri Lanka, given the geopolitical dynamics…
In conversation with Dinesha de Silva Wikramanayake
Dinesha de Silva Wikramanayake is the Country Representative of The Asia Foundation. We begin by talking about what compelled Dinesha to join TAF, after, as noted on the Foundation’s site, two decades of…
Portraits of diversity from Myanmar vital for Sri Lanka
When the British administrator J.S. Furnivall coined the term “plural society” he was talking about colonial Burma to describe the extraordinary diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, races and religions that inhabited its cities….
Ramaphosa and Government’s Policy shift on Reconciliation
Image courtesy Several weeks after Cyril Ramaphosa, Vice President of South Africa and Special Envoy of President Zuma to Sri Lanka, arrived in Sri Lanka to assist us in our search for…
The slow wheels of justice and change: a Sri Lankan case study?
Image via Rights Now Five years since the end of the war, the state of affairs in Sri Lanka is likely to evoke feelings of frustration and despondency for most readers of…
