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Ministry of Resettlement was newly established by His Excellency Mahinda Rajapakse as the President of Sri Lanka in November 2005. The name of the Ministry itself indicates the mandate of resettlement and it means to resettle Internally Displaced People and refugees emerged, resulting from the civil war which has been ravaging the country over the past two decades.
A separate Ministry of Resettlement was newly established, following the election of His Excellency Mahinda Rajapakse as the President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka in November 2005. The name of the Ministry itself indicates the mandate of resettlement and it means to resettle Internally Displaced People and refugees emerged, resulting from the civil war which has been ravaging the country over the past two decades. In 2005, around 876, 295 IDPs and refugees have been found with various status.
It is evident from Table 1 that around 45% of the IDPs and refugees have been resettled. Yet another 39% are still languishing in the welfare centers and with their friends and relatives awaiting resettlement. Also there are possibilities that refugees in abroad could return to the Island depending on the degree of normalcy prevailing in the country.
The target group of 339, 224 namely the IDPs living in welfare centres and outside welfare centres are scattered heavily in certain districts and thinly in other districts covering all the districts of Sri Lanka.
As mentioned earlier, the emergence of new IDPs has drawn attention of the donors and others. The distributions of these IDPs by district are shown in Table 3. However, in Trincomalee, the IDPs from Kanthalai are returning to their original place, Muthur numbering around 45,000 persons.
The ministry has undertaken two Tsunami reconstruction projects funded by Skat together with Helvetas (Swiss Association for International Co-operation) in Batticaloa District on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. The projects are funded 20% by Helvetas and 80% by Swiss Solidarity. The projects' objective is to provide appropriate and sustainable housing to Tsunami affected communities. However, the intention goes beyond mere construction, it includes also improving the social, economic and environmental conditions
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