Dr Farah Mihlar

Transitional justice, though heavily problematised, is a burgeoning and transforming field. However, apart from when atrocity crimes such as genocide are committed, it remains negligent of the rights and positionality of non-dominant ethnic, religious and linguistic groups. Sri Lanka, which recently attempted transitional justice, offers a useful case study of the role of identity and minority positioning in conflict related crimes and victim and perpetrator status. Through empirical research in conflict affected parts of the country this article demonstrates this specific minority dimension, including the differential justice demands of ethnic and religious groups, and analyses how neglect of these factors affected the country’s transitional justice process. It also challenges assumptions on the neutrality of a majoritarian ethno-nationalist state in delivering transitional justice to all communities. Though also a contested topic, the article builds on the minority rights framework and proposes an approach to ensure identity groups are actively included in transitional justice and their rights are protected. It concludes that such an approach is crucial, in line with critical transitional justice, to ensure transformative change by guaranteeing equality and non-discrimination, responding to structural violations, and striving towards non-repetition and meaningful reconciliation.

This article uses coloniality as an analytical framework to critique the concept of localisation. It argues that localisation is inadequate to respond to the asymmetrical power dynamic that it seeks to dislodge. Fundamentally, this is because localisation does not account for coloniality, which is the underlying logic of colonialism embedded within the humanitarian sector. Positionality and funding are two factors that enable organisations in the ‘Global North’ to remain powerful even through localisation, but this article goes further to interrogate how epistemic and methodological coloniality reinforces and maintains subordination of organisations in the ‘Global South.’ Ironically, localisation seeks to recognise knowledge and experience from the ‘local’, but largely, this knowledge and experience must be produced through the methods and systems of the ‘Global North’. This is self-defeating because institutions in the ‘Global North’ gatekeep methods and practices and perpetuate a capacity gap that prevents effective localisation. Leadership relevanceThis paper problematises the conceptualisation of localisation, an influential theory within the humanitarian sector. It does so by arguing that the power-hierarchy that localisation seeks to dislocate cannot shift until coloniality, the underlying logic of colonialism, is acknowledged and dealt with. The paper challenges the structural and foundational basis upon which humanitarian knowledge production and ways of being are founded and exposes the dominance of the 'Global North' within these systems. Using decolonial theory it disrupts dominant and mainstream positioning within the sector, debunks popular notions and raises critical questions for humanitarian leaders to confront in terms of ‘international' - 'local' power relations.

Scholarly work exists on how Muslim minority positioning affects identity and politics, but what is less known is its impact on religion. Sri Lanka’s 9% Muslim population, the country’s second largest minority, has undergone a series of recent changes to religious identity, thinking and practice, which have been shaped by its relationship to the dominant and warring ‘ethnic others’. As Sri Lanka plunged deeper into armed conflict in the 1990s, Muslims experienced significant shifts in religious thinking and practice, identifying strictly with a more ‘authentic’ Islam. After the war ended in 2009, Muslims became the target of majoritarian Sinhala-Buddhist violence, resulting in a reinterpretation of Islam and a counter process of change. Using the Sri Lankan Muslim case study to engage with scholarly critiques of majority–minority binaries, this article analyses how religious change is brought about through the interjection of minority status with ethno-nationalisms and conflict. Its focus on Islam in Sri Lanka contributes to area studies and to Islamic studies, the latter through a rare analysis of Islamic reform in a Muslim minority context