The Dissertation sets out the results of an evaluation of certain aspects of the Commonwealth of Australia's Freedom of Information Legislation and proposals to introduce a Freedom of Information Law in Sri Lanka. The major purpose of the study was: (i) to evaluate whether the Commonwealth FOI Act has achieved the objects of Parliament - whether members of the public could have a free access to government information subject to important exemptions. (ii) whether a FOI regime should be introduced to Sri Lanka In conducting my research, I devoted three chapters to FOI in Australia including the development of the legislation. I analysed key components of the legislation and researched to what extent the FOI Act has achieved its objects. I devoted two chapters towards the concept of transparency of government in Sri Lanka, the attitude of the Courts towards the concept of the right to information and whether Sri Lanka needs a Freedom of Information Act. In the last two chapters, I have devoted a chapter each to the concept of translocation of laws and about an ideal FOI Act for Sri Lanka, which is an adaptation of the Australian Act. The individual components of the methodology incorporated: (i) a literature survey of the Commonwealth FOI Act, Freedom of Information in the United Nations and in the USA; and Sweden, Canada and New Zealand; (ii) a literature survey concerning the transparency of government in Sri Lanka (ii) interviews with a cross section Commonwealth FOI administrators and key politicians, lawyers and a cross section of members of the press and public in Sri Lanka; and (iv) research of the Australian FOI legislation The empirical data present an analysis of key features of the Commonwealth FOI Act with particular attention to exemption clauses. I have recommended some amendments to the FOI Act in view of the Commonwealth Government's policy of outsourcing some of its activities and the creation of a position of FOI Commissioner. Finally my research indicates that Sri Lanka needs Freedom of Information legislation to meet the challenges facing a developing country that is endeavoring to reach 'newly developed status' early in the new millennium. Furthermore, international lenders and donors are now requiring that developing countries like Sri Lanka seeking aid, should show more transparency in its activities. I have drafted a Freedom of Jiformation Bill for Sri Lanka. I have based the draft on the Australian law adapted to suit the local conditions in Sri Lanka, which is in Appendix "G".

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Internally displaced persons remaining in camps</p><p>- who are they, why do they stay?</p><p>A case study of internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka</p><p>Essay in Political Science C, by Rebecka Johansson, fall 2004</p><p>This essay is a case study of internally displaced persons in camps in the district of Vavunyia in northern Sri Lanka. The main question was; Why do some internally displaced persons remain in camps when many displaced people already have settled elsewhere? The aim of this study was to examine why some people stay in camps even after a ceasefire agreement has been signed and though many people already have settled. The literature on solutions of conflict-induced displacement is not conceptually rich or theoretically exact. Therefore this study also tried to make a model for analysing why some individuals remain in camps. The model is based on the political scientist Robert Dahl theories on “political resources”. The concept used in this essay is “personal resources”. The personal resources examined were social situations and land and property ownerships and political and legal rights. The study assumes from the hypothesis that the remaining people in camps lack these personal resources which are of importance for their ability and motivation to settle outside the camps. The personal resources have been divided into structural and agential factors.</p><p>The result of this study suggests that the given hypothesis was right; the remaining displaced persons lack most of the examined personal resources. Their social situation was characterised by low status, small social network in the place they fled from, low education and unskilled work. A majority of the displaced who remained in the camps were landless. Until recently their legal right to choose settlement was restricted. The only personal resource that the majority of the displaced possessed was the political right to vote. The lack of personal resources affects both the displaced persons’ ability and motivation to find a durable solution.</p><p>Worthy to note is that it is impossible to draw clear distinctions between what is to be seen as agential and structural factors. Landlessness which in the introduction was categorised as a structural factor was proved to also constitute an agential factor as it affects people’s motivation to return.</p><p>The study shows that the circumstances surrounding internally displaced persons are complex and constitute many obstacles to their possibility to find permanent settlements. The most obvious factors, like not having any place to return to and deprivation of the legal rights of choice of settlement, can be the most important explanations.</p>

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Tsunamis are low amplitude, large wavelength waves that can significantly impact coastal regions. Although their destructive impacts are clear from recent events, the frequency with which tsunamis occur is less well constrained. To better understand the tsunami history and coastal impacts in Sri Lanka, this study compares sediments deposited by the December 26, 2004, tsunami to older lagoon sediments in search of evidence for paleotsunami deposits. Results from this study illustrate that the coastal lagoons in Sri Lanka preserve tsunami deposits and can provide the first steps towards constraining the paleotsunami history of the Indian Ocean. Because Sri Lanka is a far field location relative to the Sumatra-Andaman subduction zone, the preserved tsunami deposits are likely mega-tsunami events similar in size and destruction to the December 26, 2004, tsunami. The December 26, 2004, M 9.1?9.3 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake generated a massive tsunami that propagated throughout the Indian Ocean, causing extreme coastal inundation and destruction. The southeastern coastline of Sri Lanka was impacted by the 2004 tsunami where between one and three waves inundated coastal villages, lagoons, and lowlands, killing more than 35,000 people. Karagan Lagoon, located on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka, was impacted by two waves from this tsunami. Although the lagoon commonly is dominated by organic-rich, siliciclastic clays, silts, and fine sands, the 2004 tsunami deposited a distinct layer of coarse quartz-dominated sand between 1 and 22 cm thick. The base of the 2004 deposit is sharp and erosional and some layers feature faint subparallel laminations. The 2004 tsunami deposit is generally continuous, fines landward, and is confined to the eastern portion of Karagan Lagoon, in the direction from which the tsunami arrived. Sri Lankan lore, in conjunction with reconstructed historical earthquake data, suggests that other tsunamis likely affected Sri Lanka in the past. To test this, twenty-two 1?4 m sediment cores were collected from Karagan Lagoon, providing key information for unraveling the pre-2004 tsunami history of southeastern Sri Lanka. At depth, sixteen cores from Karagan Lagoon contain as many as ten distinct sand layers, including the deposit from the 2004 tsunami. These cores feature siliciclastic clays, silts, and fine sands that dominate the background lagoonal sedimentation that are punctuated by coarse sand layers. These sand-rich layers feature sharp, erosional bases, coarsen and fine upwards, vary in thickness from 1 to 22 cm, and include varying percentages of fine to very coarse sand, with a low-abundance of silt and clay. In the best constrained interval, three coarse sand layers include composition, grain size, grading, and sedimentary structures similar to the sediments deposited by the December 26, 2004, tsunami. The layers are identified in five of the twenty-two cores, although the thicknesses vary. Six additional less well constrained sand layers are present in four of the twenty-two cores. Cores located closer to the lagoon mouth and the eastern coastline (the direction from which the 2004 tsunami arrived) contain more sand layers than cores farther away from the tsunami wave entry point. On the basis of their sedimentary structures, geometry, and extent, these sandy layers are interpreted to represent paleotsunami deposits. AMS radiocarbon dating was used to date the bulk organic sediment from above, between, and below the ten paleotsunami layers in sediment cores from Karagan Lagoon to constrain the timing of events in southeastern Sri Lanka. Material from within the deposit was not dated because it was likely transported from various sources during the event and thus does not represent the age of the tsunami. AMS radiocarbon dates from above and below the paleotsunami layers were calibrated from radiocarbon years before present to calendar years before present (Cal YBP) using OxCal v. 4.0 (Bronk Ramsey, 1995; Bronk Ramsey, 2001) with calibration curve IntCal04 (Reimer et al., 2004). The constraining time intervals of tsunami deposits II?VI were averaged to yield deposits of ages 226, 1641, 4198, 4457, 4924 Cal YBP. Tsunamis VII?X only had sediment dated immediately below the deposit and therefore were deposited prior to 6249, 6455, 6665, and 6840 Cal YBP. In total, ten tsunami deposits, including the 2004 event, are preserved in Karagan Lagoon on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka. The Karagan Lagoon paleotsunami deposits provide constraints on the recurrence interval of tsunamis similar in magnitude to the 2004 event. The uppermost paleotsunami units were deposited 226, 1641, 4198, 4457, and 4924 Cal YBP, based on AMS radiocarbon dating. Thus, including the 2004 event, six tsunamis affected Karagan Lagoon in the past 5500 years, yielding a recurrence interval of approximately 916 years. Three of the six events, however, occur between ~4000 and 5500 years yielding a recurrence interval of approximately 500 years for this 1500 year period. Four additional older paleotsunami deposits occur in the deeper sections of the cores and were deposited prior to 6249, 6455, 6665, and 6840 Cal YBP, yielding a recurrence interval of approximately 200 years for this time period. Assuming that Karagan Lagoon contains a complete record of tsunami events, the recurrence of tsunamis similar in magnitude to the December 26, 2004, event can occur as often as 200 years. This ?recurrence interval? is illustrated by our data for the time period with increased tsunami activity from ~4000 to 7000 Cal YBP. Tsunamis may potentially affect Sri Lanka at relatively high frequency during certain time intervals though the overall recurrence pattern of these events displays a highly irregular distribution. This extreme variability needs to be taken into consideration when such events are related to earthquake recurrence intervals. Prior to the December 26, 2004, tsunami, paleotsunami deposits in the Indian Ocean were largely unstudied and consequently, Holocene tsunami chronology was incompletely understood for the Indian Ocean. The results from this study represents the first geologic evidence of paleotsunami deposits in Sri Lanka generated by tsunamis during the past 7000 years. The identification of these paleotsunami deposits illustrates that the 2004 tsunami was not a ?one-time event,? but in fact has ancient counterparts.

Traditional approaches to modeling environmental resources withinsecure or illdefined property rights are based on partial equilibrium models. This dissertation takes the view that since insecure tenure arrangements may be difficult to remedy, effects of national and sectoral policies should be analyzed in a general equilibrium framework in order to take unintended side effects on the the utilization of environmental resources into account. Specifically, two case studies on deforestation in Costa Rica and land degradation in Sri Lanka are developed. The main conclusions of this exercise is that although partial models may be useful in analyzing policies aimed at the environmental resource in question or reforms in the property rights system, economywide policies and sectoral policies aimed at other sectors may have large effects on environmental resource utilization. When the environmental quality is a concern, a general equilibrium framework shoul be used. In the case of Costa Rica, the results indicate that policies such as minimum wage legislation and capital taxation have significant effects on deforestation. The deforestation effects should be taken into account in policy making, and mesaures to mitigate deforestation should accompany these policies. Similar results hold for the case study of land degradation in Sri Lanka. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan 1997

I litteratur, film, nyhetsinslag och tidningar porträtteras krig som mannens domän. I krig är det mannen som är den aktiva parten och kvinnan den passiva. Männen är ute och slåss, skjuter, spränger, och kvinnorna sitter hemma och väntar ängsligt på att männen ska komma hem. Eller så är kvinnan offer för olika sorters (oftast sexuellt) våld. Mannen ses alltså som krigare och kvinnan som pacifist. Men är det så verkligheten ser ut? Jag är intresserad av hur media skapar verkligheten, snarare än skildrar den. Nyhetsmedier framställer sig själva som objektiva skildrare av verkligheten, och det finns en vedertagen uppfattning hos mottagarna att nyheterna är en spegling av omvärlden. Men så är inte fallet. Om vi tar en tidning som exempel är denna tidning inte en neutral avsändare utan är i högsta grad färgad av den omvärld den verkar i. Tidningar både återskapar och lyder under redan rådande diskurser och kan därför omöjligt ge en helt neutral bild av en händelse. Detta är utgångspunkten till den här uppsatsen: jag vill undersöka diskurser inom journalistiken för att se på vilka sätt verkligheten skapas och återskapas. Inbördeskriget på Sri Lanka bröt ut 1983 och pågick i tjugosex år innan regeringen lyckades besegra gerillan. Under de tjugosex åren anslöt sig tusentals kvinnor till gerillarörelsen LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Dessa kvinnor genomgick hård militärträning, stred vid fronten jämsides männen och genomförde många självmordsuppdrag. De kvinnliga och manliga soldaterna utförde alltså samma sorts sysslor och var, rent objektivt, jämbördiga. Men hur har nyhetsrapporteringarna sett ut kring soldaterna? Har de kvinnliga LTTEmedlemmarna representerats på samma sätt som de manliga, eller har också det här kriget porträtterats som männens krig? Och hur har de civila kvinnorna representerats? Är det bilden av kvinnan som offer eller pacifist som återkommer även i de här artiklarna, eller ges en annan bild?

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Background: There are different types of firms in the world. Those that lead change and those who follow change. In this thesis, the authors have chosen to see if a dynamic industry in a developing nation can be the leaders of change, or if they are stuck as the ones following developments in the west. Sri Lanka is a developing nation with a rapidly growing software industry. Like its neighbour, India, the country and region has been known for its cheap, yet highly skilled labour. This study thus aimed at seeing if something other than price, namely entrepreneurial strategy can play a meaningful role in explaining growth. Purpose: To study the importance of the relationships between resources, entrepre-neurial orientation, the perceived environment and growth in a developing nation perspective. Theoretical framework: Theory based on the Resource Based View, arguing that unique combinations of resources and capabilities are the creators of strategy and competitive advantage, together with theory on the Entrepreneurial Orien-tation of firms looking at innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking auton-omy of firms, was used to build a framework for analysing what drives growth in a dynamic market. Method: In order to fulfil the purpose of the thesis, a quantitative study was con-ducted. A web survey was sent out to 73 firms, while 41 responded. A smaller qualitative study was also conducted in order to exemplify and pro-vide deeper knowledge on the findings from the quantitative part. Conclusion: Several important knowledge-based resources and the EO components of proactiveness and autonomy showed significant relations to growth. Also, the findings indicated that certain resources contributed significantly to the EO of firms. However, it was proved that Sri Lanka’s software industry is not driven by innovation, but rather other factors.

Phytophthora vignae, causal agent of stem and root rot of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), was reported for the first time in Sri Lanka. The pathogen was found in cowpea field soils from 3 of 5 geographic regions sampled. Only one site however, had plants exhibiting disease symptoms. Of the eight cowpea varieties grown in Sri Lanka, four were shown to be relatively resistant; all other legumes inoculated were completely resistant. Two morphologic and physiologic races of P. vignae were identified among the 24 isolates recovered, based on differential pathogenicity on cowpea varieties. Bacteria isolated from field soils, and other known bacterial biocontrol agents, inhibited P. vignae in culture, but only three Sri Lankan isolates considerably suppressed the disease in greenhouse tests. Volatile substances produced by most bacteria inhibited mycelial growth and sporangial production by P. vignae. The increased pH of the exposed medium suggested the involvement of ammonia. Volatile inhibitors were produced by these bacteria in soil, but only with added substrate; Strain DF-3101 also reduced oospore germination in soil. Cowpea plants inoculated with the VA mycorrhizal (VAM) fungus Glomus intraradices in P. vignae-infested soil were larger than non-mycorrhizal plants, but only at low levels of the pathogen. VAM colonization was reduced at high levels of the pathogen, and root infection by the pathogen was reduced by VAM. The fungicides metalaxyl, fosetyl-Al, Banrot, and Manzate-200DF reduced in vitro mycelial growth, but at different concentrations. Sporangia formation and germination, and oogonia formation by P. vignae, was reduced significantly by metalaxyl and fosetyl-Al. In greenhouse tests, metalaxyl, even at low concentrations, reduced disease; Fosetyl-Al was effective at high concentrations; Manzate-200DF was effective as a soil drench but not as a foliar spray; Banrot effectively reduced disease at 50 mg a.i./L. Exposure of a bacterial biocontrol agent to these fungicides in vitro did not affect its capacity to subsequently produce volatile inhibitors, but exposure to 10 ug/ml of metalaxyl and 50 ug/ml of Manzate-200DF reduced its capacity to subsequently inhibit mycelial growth of P. vignae. / Graduation date: 1991