The buzz in Colombo these days is about a 'mega’ event that is being organised by a coalition known as the ‘March 12 Movement’ and the AFRIEL organisation.

The event will be held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium on October 5, and will feature Presidential candidates on one stage, in a public discourse about national events.

One key feature of the event is to be the introduction of 3, 000 ‘citizen reporters’ from AFRIEL, who will be used towards election monitoring activities at the upcoming election.

In the run-up to the event, we thought we’d sit down with AFRIEL Executive Director Ravindra De Silva, to find out more about this event and his 3, 000 citizen reporters.

Name?

Ravindra De Silva

Current designation?

Executive Director, AFRIEL Youth Network, but honestly, since we work together as a team, I more comfortable with saying I am a team member of AFRIEL, rather than an Executive. I am also on the Advisory Board of the World Youth Movement for Democracy

What is AFRIEL?

AFRIEL is the Association of Friendship and Love.

Can you tell us a little bit about AFRIEL?

AFRIEL was established in December 2013, in Maviddapuram, Jaffna, to foster friendly relations between communities. Especially after the end of the war, we felt that the trust, friendship and love between the communities had broken down, and our intention was to repair these relationships. We feel that by empowering and mobilizing youth, we could tackle this problem in the long-term, because it is the youth that will take the country forward, so that is what we have been doing these past five years.

Does the AFRIEL Youth Network work only in the North?

No, the AFRIEL Youth Network is now spread across all 22 districts in the country—we work in the North, the South and the East—if at all, it is only in the West that we have little representation!

Why is that?

I have personally felt, based on my experience in this sector, that much of the attention is focused on Colombo and other Western provincial areas. But the people outside of Colombo, the rural citizens are mostly ignored, and perhaps only used for public consultations before a big event or at workshops. Our intention was to work directly with those affected and that is why we have been working village by village, district by district, to build a network of empowered youth.

What do you mean by empowered youth? How do you empower the youth?

We go about doing this many different ways, but if I were to summarise it, by working closely with the different communities we identify the issues each of them face and then educate the youth in the network on how best to resolve these issues. For instance, some of the big problems we see in the South are corruption, land issues, farmers’ rights, sexual harassment and domestic violations, migrant workers’ issues and issues relating to mega development project. To resolve this, we have worked to increase public knowledge on law and regulations and strengthen youth activism to foster problem-solving process within communities.

In the North, with issues like land grabbing, disappearances, ex-combatant, resettlement, refugees (Indian returnees), the debt cycle from microfinance loans, migrant workers and the issues they face, we work to educate youth on law and regulations specifically on RTI and land mediation, as well as knowledge about human rights, good governance and democracy, so that they themselves are empowered to resolve these issues.

Additionally, we facilitate meetings with public officials in Colombo, so that they are able to represent their issues to the people who are tasked with taking care of them. In addition, we encourage them to participate in the political process by providing basic political education, so that they are able to—for instance—give us their views on Constitutional reform. We find that by engaging them at this age, we have a network of young, politically educated youth, who are aware of their civic responsibilities and actively engage in the political process in the country.

Who are these 3, 000 ‘citizen reporters’?

The citizen reporters are 3, 000 youth who have been specifically trained—together with the People’s Action For Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL) and the Centre for Monitoring Election Violations (CMEV)—to strengthen existing election monitoring in the country. We have selected 3 citizen reporters from 1, 000 villages across Sri Lanka, to help with this upcoming election. We will introduce them at the October 5 event in Colombo.

Can you tell us more about this October 5 event?

The October 5 event is jointly organised by the March 12 Movement and AFRIEL. The March 12 Movement is a group of civil society organisations, such as PAFFREL, CMEV, This is the first time that CSOs in Sri Lanka are getting together to organise an event like this. We hope to begin a dialogue with Presidential candidates before they are elected, so that we can continue that dialogue even after one of them eventually wins. We also want to be able to hold them accountable to the promises they make to the public. So the questions we will ask them will also be are carefully selected to make sure key thematic areas of national interest are covered. However, our goal is not to embarrass or put the Presidential candidates on the spot— so we have restricted the questions to five per candidate. The questions also have been selected by a special committee within the March 12 Movement and AFRIEL, so we are able to ensure they authentically questions these Presidential candidates on key issues.