Centre for Policy Alternatives on 4 September, 2020 4th September 2020: The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) is deeply concerned by the changes proposed by the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution Bill gazetted on 2nd September 2020 and its impact on constitutional democracy in Sri Lanka. CPA notes that the proposed amendment rolls back democratic reforms introduced by the Nineteenth Amendment in 2015 […]
Centre for Policy Alternatives on 8 June, 2020 Sri Lanka has witnessed a spate of Presidential Task Forces in 2020. Three Task Forces were appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as a response to COVID-19, another relating to poverty alleviation and one on education affairs.[1] The most recent two are the Presidential Task Force to build a Secure Country, Disciplined, Virtuous and Lawful Society […]
Centre for Policy Alternatives on 3 June, 2020 The need for prison reforms has been discussed for years in Sri Lanka with very little progress. The COVID19 pandemic has renewed attention to the issue in an urgent manner. Systemic issues within prisons in Sri Lanka expose inmates and staff to heightened risks due to both the contagiousness of the virus as well as […]
Centre for Policy Alternatives on 27 April, 2020 Despite the best efforts of health workers on the frontlines in combatting the virus thus far, recent increases in the number of cases demonstrate that the public health crisis presented by COVID-19 is far from averted. This report will illustrate the importance of high levels of testing in formulating an effective response, as we attempt […]
Centre for Policy Alternatives on 9 December, 2019 FOREWORD The year 2018 was a memorable year. It marked the 70th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence, which CPA in turn marked with a Survey on people’s expectations of Democracy, Government and Governance. It also marked the lowest and highest points in our political and constitutional evolution on account of the October 26th constitutional coup […]
Centre for Policy Alternatives on 30 May, 2019 Throughout the past three decades, successive governments have stressed the importance of constitutional reform. This has been either as a means of addressing minority grievances which in turn would form part of a solution to the ethnic conflict or as a means of restructuring various contentious aspects within the 1978 Constitution (i.e. the executive presidential system […]
Centre for Policy Alternatives on 1 March, 2019 This report examines seven emblematic cases to evaluate the levels of accountability in the prosecution of cases of human rights violations within Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system. The report is structured in three parts. First, it establishes several recurrent trends causing system failures and exacerbating the culture of impunity in Sri Lanka that the selected […]