Inclusion and Exclusion of Girls and Women in Armed Conflict of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The women and girls’ participation in armed conflict is common and women have been playing in war and conflict as revolts, independence struggles, and war in many countries. Feminism centers on the idea that all women are oppressed by virtue of their gender. However, this does not necessarily imply that all women will be oppressed in the same way or that the origins of their oppression are the same. The main objective of the research was to examine specific effects of armed conflict with special reference to Sri Lanka. The specific objectives were, to determine the gendered impact of forced displacement in armed conflict, to examine the change in gender relations in armed conflict, and to discover which armed conflict increased gender based violence. The research being carried out implementing both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods, informed by secondary literature. Secondary data will be solicited from books from the libraries, articles from the internet and journals and documentations on armed conflict on women and children. The finding revealed that sexual and gender based violence denies women security, the right to enjoy and forces them into subordinate positions compared to men. Moreover, forced migration is caused by armed conflict and has become common in the under developing countries like Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, finding shows that women become vulnerable to physical and to all forms of gender violence. As a conclusion, women and war have been challenged here because they ignore the active roles women have played in supporting conflict, both in combat and in acts of violence against civilian populations. Moreover, it is too narrowed to limit women as victims and men as warriors. Why because women play both roles in conflict situation supporting roles like intelligence, logistics, food, nursing as well as combat, bombing and suicide missions. However, there are reasons why women become a part of war. The reasons are various and majors are formed recruitment, oppression, and being valued in the society. Moreover, it is being found that same as men, women also share same danger and insecurity specifically being vulnerable and also sexual exploitation. Nevertheless, there are both physical and psychological effect faced by women during and after the war. Besides, it is obvious that women are not inherently peaceful and men are not inherently violence