The two parties to the separatist conflict in Sri Lankan—the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the federal government—have been negotiating the political future of the country since a ceasefire agreement was signed by both parties on 22 February 2002. This adds a new dimension to the work of the women's movements in Sri Lanka. Though these movements have been active in confronting the conflict over the last two decades, the transition to a potential military and political peace poses new dilemmas in framing women's concerns. The Sub-Committee on Gender Issues that has instituted within the negotiating mechanism is only one such forum for articulating and placing these concerns within the framework of constitutional and political rights. In addition to this, they will have to consider other important issues that lie outside this framework of rights which will inevitably surface in the post-conflict period.
In countries around the world that have been stricken by protracted conflict, women have been actively involved in campaigns for peace. In Northern Ireland, feminist writers have documented the efforts of women's groups from both sides to organise on working class lines, while the 'men' were negotiating a 'settlement'. Similarly, one of most striking peace campaigns, the "Women in Black", is active in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as in the former Yugoslavia. In Peru, women's organisations persistently lobbied the state to end the war and establish democratic processes. They used the media and other networks to promote peace, and were also directly involved in humanitarian work. In South Africa, women campaigned actively against measures that restricted their mobility in addition to struggling against the apartheid regime.
Sri Lanka's women, too, have been campaigning for peace since the early stages of the conflict. Women's activism in Sri Lankan has involved multiple organisations representing different agendas and identities, which have sometimes come together strategically to lobby for certain common causes. Kumudini Samuel, the human rights activist and a co-ordinator of the Women and Media Collective in Colombo, has documented in detail the activities of the Mother's Front of the early 1980s, (which campaigned for peace and demanded the return of their sons who had disappeared in the North), and of the left-oriented Women's Action Committee, formed in 1982, which took up issues such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1979), the release of women political prisoners and the rape of women in the North and East. Since those early efforts, with the repeated failure of peace negotiations, the demand for peace by women's groups has only grown stronger, and their activism over the past two decades has varied from lobbying for legal reform to following up individual cases of wartime violence against women. Mothers in the North have come together to demand the return of their 'disappeared' sons and mothers of the soldiers in the Sri Lankan military have actively sought information about their sons missing in action. Groups have also been working on the special humanitarian needs of women living in the conflict areas. These groups have developed links across ethnic communities and expressed demonstrated solidarity with each other's demands. In many ways, women have been negotiating peace for years in Sri Lanka, even during the period of massive violence.
Despite this history of activism, women have been excluded from the official peace process. Since the 1980s there have been six attempts to resolve the North-East conflict through negotiations. In 1984 there was the All Party Conference in Colombo. This was followed the talks held in Thimpu in 1985. In 1987 the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord was signed on the initiative of the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In 1989-90 talks were held between the President Ranasinghe Premadasa and the LTTE which resulted in the expulsion of the Indian Peace Keeping Force. The last round of negotiations was initiated by the current President Chandrika Kumaranatunge in 1994. After a gap of eight years the sixth attempt was launched by Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe in February 2002. In all these attempts, women have been excluded from any key negotiating role. (The only woman who has been present at every round of the current peace negotiations has been Adele Balasingham, the wife of the former chief LTTE negotiator. However, she has not claimed to represent a women's agenda for the LTTE at the peace table.) Only the parties responsible for war and its accompanying atrocities are negotiating the terms of the peace, while those who have been lobbying for peace and campaigning against human rights violations over the past two decades find themselves marginalised in the formal process.