IFES - Sri Lanka

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Sri Lanka

A computer programmer from Sri Lanka's elections department shows the new registry to USAID Mission Director Rebecca Cohn.

Sri Lanka has been a constitutional democracy since 1948. Under its mixed parliamentary model, an elected president appoints the cabinet in consultation with the prime minister. For the past 20 years, the country’s economic, social, and political development has been hampered by ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil ethnic groups.

Since 1983, over 66,000 lives have been lost in a separatist war waged against government forces by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE is seeking to establish a separate state in the country’s Tamil-dominated north and east regions.

In 2004, a tsunami ravaged Sri Lanka’s southern and eastern coastlines, which resulted in more than 31,000 deaths and 100,000 homes destroyed. In addition, it left more than 400,000 people jobless among many other social and infrastructural repercussions.

IFES has been providing assistance to Sri Lanka’s Department of Elections since 2005.

Current Projects

Modernizing the Electoral Register

On December 26, 2004 tsunami waves destroyed the elections office in Sri Lanka’s Galle district. The office building was damaged beyond repair, and 25 years’ of electoral documents were destroyed. This event threatened the legitimacy of the voters’ registry and thereby dampened public confidence in the democratic institutions of Sri Lanka. To ensure the security of key electoral documents, the Department of Elections invited IFES to provide assistance in computerizing its electoral registry in an efficient, transparent, and sustainable manner.

In 2005, IFES began assessing the national voter registry and providing the Department of Elections with technical assistance as they moved forward with computerization. The project has five steps, which include developing a plan for computerization, consulting with civil society about the new design, procuring/installing the necessary equipment in the secretariat in Colombo and 20 district offices, providing IT training for secretariat and district-level elections staff, and conducting a public information campaign about the new registry.