Since the end of the armed conflict in 2009, the number of Sri Lankan refugee returnees from India has been considerably increased. OfERR Ceylon has been working and helping the returnees in re-establish their lives in their homeland after return. They majorly support in getting civil and legal documentation for citizenship, education, livelihood, shelter, women empowerment, capacity building, job opportunities and many other essential areas. Since 2009, a total of 31,039 Sri Lankan refugees have been returned from India so far. The return of refugees also entails a variety of challenges including reception, assistance, housing, livelihood, psycho-social care, and integration into the health and education system. Successful reintegration is based on economic, political and social factors. Economically OfERR Ceylon is helping returnees to re-establish their lives by providing livelihood assistance and strengthening reintegration support through establishing linkages and counseling. Welcome groups are formed in order to provide linkage services, networking aid and guide to receive reintegration support for civil and essential documentation. In addition, SHGs were formed especially for women returnees to support for their self employment and to increase their household economy.

Many refugees lost their documents while fleeing from conflict areas. The lack of awareness on essential documents and documentation procedures has disempowered them to be unconscious of essential documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates. Therefore, the vast majority has not obtained the documents during their life in exile. From the past experiences, it is learnt that the majority among the refugees return to Sri Lanka without securing complete sets of their essential documents including consular birth certificates and Sri Lankan citizenship. The non-availability of essential documents become a big obstacle for them to enjoy basic rights as citizens and claim the rights and entitlements including NIC, employment, land, housing and other resettlement benefits. Students need consular birth certificates to attend G.C.E (O/L) and G.C.E (A/L) examinations and pursue university admissions and participate in the state and regional level competitions.

In addition, there is a need to obtain equivalent certificates for the academic degrees earned from India. Refugee returnee graduates found it very difficult to obtain equivalency for Polytechnic Courses and Para Medical courses earned from India as this process is a money and time consuming process and which doesn’t always yield successful results.

OfERR organizes capacity building training and awareness programs to develop the capacities of the IDPs and refugee returnees. By building refugee capacities and promoting their vocational and income generation activities, OfERR (Ceylon) aims to create a sustainable community with enriched knowledge, skill and attitude. Some of the capacity building programs held among the target groups including refugee returnees and IDP returnees are:

1. Training on Protection
2. Training on Sexual and Gender Based Violence Protection
3. Training on Child Protection
4. Training on Child Care, Health & Hygiene

OfERR Ceylon is conducting the training activities among the communities as it is believed that education is a key for community development. OfERR (Ceylon) also facilitates capacity building sessions concerning civil documentation, disaster risk management, gender-based violence and child abuse, child protection measures, civil rights and access to legal services, good governance and functions of local governments. These activities are planned and implemented in cooperation with community-based organizations (CBOs), self-help groups and other local actors. OfERR Ceylon also provides training sessions which are aimed at providing and upgrading livelihood skills such as business & marketing, mechanical maintenance, home gardening, herbal plant cultivation, chili powder production and small business development.

Many returned refugees struggle to secure adequate housing. Homes and property may have been destroyed or damaged during the war and land title documents may have been lost, and in some areas the military has still not release the land and they forcibly occupied for ‘high-security zones’ back to former residents. Returned refugees must also stay for a minimum of six months at one location to apply for National Identity Cards (NIC), essential civil documents to secure employment, education or other services in Sri Lanka. To complete the six-month requirement until they get a housing assistance, OfERR’s temporary shelter programme has been set up. The objective is to assist the vulnerable refugee returnees with the transitional shelter upon return, to restart their lives in a positive way in their native villages. For the shelter assistance programme, the vulnerability of the returnees were assessed with the participation of village level government officials and CBOs.

Upon finalizing the beneficiary for support, the materials were provided for the owner-driven construction of temporary shelters. Overall, there were XXXXX beneficiaries of refugee returnee community assisted with the provision of temporary shelter in the northern and eastern provinces.

The shelter support is regarded as a prime need among other needs for the returning refugees and returned refugees in Sri Lanka. The refugee returnees upon return stay with their relatives or friends until they receive housing assistance or build their own housing. But in practice, staying with relatives is highly prevalent and they hardly build their own house. Staying with relatives leads to unnecessary problems including lack of safety and security, sexual exploitation, abuses, etc. Though there are housing schemes and plans including Indian Housing plan, the past experience illustrates that all returnees could not receive housing assistance within short periods.

Counseling is provided to GBV and child-abuse survivors (traumatized, physically and psychologically affected) for legal support and access to safe houses run by other agencies, and provide occupational therapy for severe cases. During the reporting period, 89 women and children were given counseling support from the Government through referral of OfERR to reduce safety risks and vulnerabilities. 75% of beneficiaries enjoy greater safety, justice and dignity as a result of reduced protection risks. Also through the 2 GBV awareness programs, 164 men and women could raise awareness on prevention of SGBV. Further, counseling service was given to 80 survivors of SGBV in the reporting period where some violence issues have been solved. Also trauma counseling was given to 11 women in SGBV.

In the context of a post-war rehabilitation, strengthening the livelihood and employment opportunities in the resettlement areas is very vital. With the contextual changes, the refugee returnees and the displaced communities were beginning to resettle in their native villages. At this situation, with the understanding that right to livelihood is an imperative to a returned or a resettled refugee or an IDP family, OfERR (Ceylon) has given maximum emphasis to the sustainable livelihood programme. The other reason is that the sustainable livelihoods, while giving the individual a regular income, will also contribute for the local economic development. In this effort, the livelihood sector was considered as one of the primary areas of recovery and among the resettled households, livelihood has been considered as one of the most important needs that to be immediately catered. Thus, OfERR’s intervention aims at providing support for sector-based livelihood assistance for returned/resettled communities who engaged and willingness to engage in agriculture, fisheries and livestock related sectors and enterprise development support, especially for youth through inputs, equipment and accessories with required skills.

There were overall XXXXXX beneficiaries assisted with the provision of livelihood such as fishery, agriculture, animal husbandry and micro-enterprises.

As a result of the livelihood support, the families were asserted their right to earn with the provision of livelihood, after reintegration in their native places where there is a lacking of livelihood and employment opportunities. With this, they were capacitated to engage in sustainable livelihood measures to accomplish day today livelihood needs of the families. From the monitoring of livelihood beneficiaries that were undertaken with the external experts it was learnt that from the needs assessment to the point of evaluation there was a continuous connectivity with the beneficiaries; and the success rate of over 90 per cent among the monitored beneficiaries was quite evident from the field visits. Particularly, among the returnees, the livelihoods restored their sense of hope and dignity and made them be self-reliant to cope up with the economic challenges that are experienced in the preliminary period of reintegration.

The returnees, on arrival, may face problems with the livelihood that can support their daily survival. Absence of adequate livelihood opportunities in Sri Lanka adversely affects sustenance and broader protection of returnees. This communicates a bad message to the refugees living in India, who cites stories of such difficulties as one of the key reasons for postponing their return to Sri Lanka and, in some cases, considering options for travel to other countries.The returnees may need support with the expertise and aids for several livelihood schemes including agriculture, fishing, poultry/animal husbandry, carpentry, painting, masonry, etc. In this period, OfERR Ceylon supported 695 families.

Education and health are key pillars of development and OfERR Ceylon implements various programs among the schools to address the challenges children face. Education is regarded as one of the most important needs as part of the reintegration needs. Understanding that good education can lit hope in the lives of resettled families, OfERR (Ceylon) gave maximum importance in reintegrating the children back in schools upon return. This is due to the reason that assistance in accessing the Sri Lankan school system, vocational skills training, and other education related services in Sri Lanka will result in more sustainable livelihoods and employment opportunities.

In this line, OfERR (Ceylon) provided assistance for the returnee children with securing enrolment in schools and ensuring better reintegration in the schools in Sri Lanka, providing support with stationery, uniform, shoe-socks to the most vulnerable children, providing support with catch up classes (including language classes) for children below 18, conducting career guidance and counselling sessions for graduates/diploma holders, providing counselling support to motivate and monitor school education & support for reintegration in schools through recruitment of animators/counsellors in the regional offices, support payment to graduates to obtain equivalent certificates for the Indian qualifications, providing travel costs associated with obtaining 10th and 12th standard equivalent certificates and linking the experienced/skilled returnee students with appropriate non-formal education or National Vocational Qualification certificate programs.

To create the Child Friendly Approach, new construction and renovation of the school buildings has been undertaken. On the other hand, trainings were conducted to contribute for capacity development on CFA related activities such as Formation/Activation of School attendance Committee (SAC), Develop and distribute advocacy materials to promote attendance and reintegration, Collect data of dropped out children, and irregular/poor attendance, Preparation of school catchment areas maps, Home visits to reintegrate children, Community based cluster meetings for awareness creation, Teacher training on inclusive education and child friendly approach, Student camp promoting child to child approach & peer study initiatives in educational activities, Seasonal calendars to identify the seasons for irregular attendance,

To support the CFA concept OfERR has supported various tools and mechanisms to enhance the CFA in the School such as Baseline data collection, Toilet construction, Group Happy Hand Washing Unit, Sustainable water supply, Hygiene Promotion training and Menstrual Hygiene Management training.

There is an increased engagement of children in school activities. The local community has been involved in the creation of child friendly environment schools. This program also resulted in sensitizing the government actors involved in the school education, to encourage the schools to have better environments to develop interest among children by promoting child friendly education themes.

In this period OfERR Ceylon assisted XXXXX children including the dropout, re-admission, counseling in the North and East. There were XXX children assisted with the support for their education, of them XXXXXXX children are from returnee families, whereas XXXXXXX children are from host communities, the latter category of beneficiaries were chosen on the basis of the extreme vulnerability.

The health programme intends to influence a greater understanding of child care needs and requirements, and improve individual and family health and hygiene practices, while also intending to promote psycho-social wellbeing among the target groups. In the awareness programmes, topics such as child protection, child abuse and child rights were taught. The Regional Director of Health Services (DHS) and Medical Officer of Health are some of the key government officials who facilitated these training programs with the support of OfERR (Ceylon) field staff. OfERR (Ceylon) staff, who were experienced in child-friendly programmes, have also played a major role as facilitators in conducting the child care, health and hygienic sessions. In these sessions, the children were sensitized on child rights, personal hygiene and hand washing techniques. They were taught about six steps of hand-washing and encouraged to practice it at home in order to lead a healthy and hygienic life. During the course of the trainings, awareness materials carrying the visuals of good health and hygienic practices have been demonstrated in order to provide practical examples of good hygiene.

Water sources have been found as one of the major needs along with the shelter needs to enable returnees to start their lives. Those who had wells at the time of their displacement need support to clean up their well.

Some people, who are unable to locate their wells in return as these wells were filled with earth by army or natural erosion should be provided support to construct wells or water sources along with those, who don’t have access to wells or other water sources. Considering the emergency, the refugee returnees should be assisted with common well or individual tube wells.

In order to promote hygienic standards in the schools, there were training and awareness sessions conducted. In these training, XXXXXX children including XXXXXX boys and XXXXXX girls have participated and benefited with the information on hygienic aspects and participants gained basic awareness and knowledge about managing the menstrual hygiene in a positive way.

Climate change is a one of the major problems in the World which highly impacts on the biodiversity and marine ecosystem. Also agriculture is considered to be one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Since Sri Lanka is a tropical country, it is a big challenge to deal with by the people. With the support of UN funding, Unicef identified drinking water issues in Jaffna due to climate change.

As a result, they decided to implement a possible rain water recirculation method so that people can reuse the purified rainwater for consumption, daily use and agricultural activities. Therefore they constructed 118 rain water recirculation tanks in Tellippalai and Koppai divisions in Jaffna district to overcome this issue. In addition, they conducted awareness programs to government officials and village people where 734 individuals participated. Of them, 85% of people are government employees.