Rajiva Wijesinha

“ Perhaps the least insidious of the agencies which worked in Sri Lanka to substitute itself for National Sovereignty was OCHA, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance. This has been functioning in the country for just a few years now, having come in I believe after the tsunami, but it had soon converted itself into a central clearing house for much of the humanitarian assistance the country received. ”

“ We were finally told by an earlier Secretary to the Ministry that it had been set up in 2006, and was another initiative of the first Senior Adviser to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, an individual who probably did more to traduce Human Rights in Sri Lanka than any other, in terms of the destructive impact he had on our Human Rights Commission, the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons and, as I now found out, humanitarian operations in general. ”

“ The way the projects were formulated indeed suggested that tracking projects was not given much importance. All organizations seemed to do everything everywhere, with no statement of clear outcomes in terms of the particular activities that would benefit particular groups of people in particular areas. ”