Will Colombo discharge the responsibility?

– The Sudar Oli Editorial

(September 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The pull out of the UN agencies and international non- governmental organizations other than ICRC from the Wanni area under the LTTE control has been completed.

This exit of these UN agencies and NGO’s has taken place following the government’s declaration that it cannot guarantee their security and its assertion to undertake the humanitarian services rendered by these agencies.

That the INGO’s had to leave forthwith following the governments notice and its assertion that it could not ensure their safety in their remaining there is rather understandable.

It is the INGO ‘s that were rendering service to the people displaced by the war, have to abandon their urgent humanitarian work and quit the Wanni area at short notice.

What is disturbing is that the human tragedy of those unfortunate people is going to worsen. The question before us is that how the international community is going to response to such a perilous situation.

There is a reason why the INGO’s left without any dilly dallying. The reason is that the government of Sri Lanka has undertaken to fulfill the humanitarian needs of the displaced people.

The big question is whether the Lankan government will discharge the duties earnestly and satisfactorily by those people.

The big question is whether the Lankan government will honour its pledge to the international community?

Whatever it may be, there will be a greater responsibility, a more sacred duty cast on the shoulders of the international community, now, than ever before, in regard to the important issue of providing humanitarian services to the displaced people in the Vanni.

(An English translation of the Editorial in The Sudar Oli, a Tamil daily, based in Colombo.) - Sri Lanka Guardian