No abstract

This paper describes the changing discourses of territory in Sri Lanka and their utility in conflict relations. The primordial homeland has been at the center of Sri Lanka's armed struggle, in which both Sinhalese and Tamil nationalisms have used claims of ancient and ethnically determined territories to justify their right to self-determination, territorial sovereignty, and armed struggle. This identity-territory nexus based on historical argument has been destabilized in Sri Lanka, however. Scholarly findings suggest that historical linkages between ethnicity and territory in Sri Lanka are highly problematic and are no longer effectual means for adjudicating territorial desires in Sri Lanka and producing stable homelands. I argue that rights-based territorial discourses have emerged to enhance the old historical justifications for territorial authority. New narratives based upon fulfilling or denying human rights have been put to work linking authority to territory based upon moral fitness and unfitness, political legitimacy and illegitimacy, and ultimately, upon which political actor deserves to rule the territorially bound population under its control. The first part of the paper examines historical narratives linking national homelands to identity as well as scholarly work that deconstructs this linkage. In part two, external sovereignty and political legitimacy are discussed as the starting point for understanding how rights-based discourses justify territorial claims. In part three, accusations related to human rights violations are described as an important vehicle for shaming political adversaries, undermining their legitimacy, and making and unmaking territorial claims in Sri Lanka.

During Sri Lanka's protracted civil conflict, linkages between ethnicity and homeland have been under considerable strain. Subsequently, alternative rationales for territorial claims have emerged, including each belligerent's human rights record and moral fitness to govern. To this end, child-based narratives such as the child as a zone of peace have been used strategically by each side to rearticulate conflict relations and spaces into moral terms. The case of the Days of Tranquility (DOTs), a humanitarian ceasefire implemented between 1995 and 2001 to immunize children against the polio virus in Sri Lanka's conflict-affected areas, is examined here. Based on fieldwork and an analysis of texts that represent the DOTs, the research reveals how child-centered tropes and humanitarian spaces for children can be politically useful to parties to a conflict as well as to the United Nations agencies that support them.Durante el prolongado conflicto civil de Sri Lanka, los lazos entre etnicidad y patria han estado sometidos a considerable tensión. Subsiguientemente, han surgido justificaciones alternativas sobre reclamaciones territoriales, incluyendo el historial sobre derechos humanos y la idoneidad moral para gobernar de cada beligerante. Con tal fin, cada bando ha utilizado estratégicamente narrativas de origen infantil, tales como las que adoptan al niño como motivo central de paz, con el propósito de rearticular relaciones de conflicto y espacios en términos morales. Al respecto, aquí se examina el caso del Día de la Tranquilidad (DT), un cese al fuego humanitario que se implementó entre 1995 y 2001 para permitir la vacunación de los niños contra el virus del polio enáreas de Sri Lanka afectadas por el conflicto. Con base en trabajo de campo y un análisis de textos relacionados con el DT, la investigación revela cómo los tropos centrados en niños y los espacios humanitarios asignados para niños pueden ser políticamenteútiles tanto para las partes en conflicto como para las agencias de las Naciones Unidas en que aquellos programas se apoyan. Palabras clave: conflicto armado, niños, espacio humanitario, Sri Lanka, territorio.

No abstract

Blurry', 'indeterminate', and 'elastic' are terms used to describe the spatial, legal, and categorical ambiguities that have characterized the war-law-space nexus since September 11th. I argue here that these same qualities were central to the lawmaking process eighty years ago in the case of the Monaco Draft, a draft convention that proposed rules to establish hospital and safety towns, zones, and localities in order to strengthen international humanitarian law. This paper reviews the Monaco Draft's spatial proposals from their conception in 1934 and their discussion at three expert consultations during the 1930s to their incorporation into the 1949 Geneva Conventions as nonbinding recommendations. An analysis of the conversations among experts charged with examining the proposed rules reveals how the interplay of territorial ideology with the more contingent realities of the battlefield produced uncertainties that conditioned the law. This was further complicated by the law's customary basis, which makes untested legal measures especially risky. The broader significance of this research is that it presents a historical case showing the problematic nature of territory, uncertainty, and materializing norms as a continuing feature of humanitarian law.