Toronto, June 21, 2011
The Mosaic Institute today announced that more than 50 young Canadian leaders of Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim Sri Lankan heritage had signed and submitted a statement to the Governments of Canada and Sri Lanka urging the pursuit of peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. The Canadian Statement about Sri Lanka was one of the tangible outcomes of the recent “Young Canadians Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka” that was convened by the Mosaic Institute in cooperation with the Trudeau Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School for Global Affairs.
The statement was drafted in March but only submitted last week to Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and to the Sri Lankan High Commission to Canada after signatures had been gathered from more than 50 young Canadians, many of whom had participated in the peace dialogue from its very inception.
The statement encourages the Government of Canada to promote academic and cultural exchanges between young Sri Lankans and young Canadians to help foster an exchange of ideas and the formation of friendships that will in turn “help to ensure that future generations of leaders in both countries are committed to the full enjoyment of pluralism, peace and prosperity for all.” The young people also state that they “stand ready to assist Canada in these efforts.”
To the Government of Sri Lanka, the diverse group of young people pledges to support the people of Sri Lanka as “committed emissaries of goodwill and constructive engagement between our two countries and their people.” They also express their shared belief that the “strongest democracies are those…whose citizens are able to exercise a full range of peaceful expression, including…the freedom to hold and express ideas that are not shared by the government of the day.”
The signatories of the Canadian Statement about Sri Lanka also address their “fellow Canadians of Sri Lankan descent”, stating that, in order to “promote true reconciliation in Sri Lanka, we in Canada must first listen to each other with open hearts and minds.” They then invoke Canada’s experience of pluralism as a desirable model for Sri Lanka, and commit “as a young generation of Canadians of Sri Lankan backgrounds, to overcome (their) differences and work together to support the people of Sri Lanka…in their grassroots efforts to rebuild their lives… disrupted or destroyed by conflict.”
Over the span of 20 months, the Mosaic Institute’s “Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka” has brought together more than 80 young leaders from the Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim Sri Lankan communities in Canada to confront their past, identify common priorities for re-building postwar Sri Lanka, and promote social and political reconciliation amongst both the people of Sri Lanka and its diaspora communities. In addition to drafting and then gathering signatures on their Canadian Statement about Sri Lanka, the young leaders involved in this initiative have been working in cooperation with the Rotary Club of Colombo South and the Canadian Rotarian Water Foundation to raise funds for the construction of residential water wells for families in Sri Lanka’s Vanni region left homeless by the civil war through an initiative they have called “Build Change”. Both the common statement and the ”Build Change” water project are tangible proof of the young organizers’ conviction that dialogue without action is just talk.
Said Mosaic Institute Executive Director John Monahan:
“The young people who have been involved in this initiative show us the best of what Canada has to offer the world. They have all taken extremely courageous stands for reconciliation both in Sri Lanka and here in Canada, and they have committed significant amounts of their own time, energy, and resources to demonstrating their commitment to peace through concrete action and measurable results. It has been a privilege to work with them, and I am excited to see the end results of the various ‘legacy projects’ that these young people are now pursuing. Peace truly is the gift that keeps on giving.”
Headquartered in Toronto, the Mosaic Institute is a “think and do” tank that harnesses the connections, knowledge and resources of Canada’s ethnocultural communities to advance Canadian solutions and promote peace and development in conflict-ridden or under-developed parts of the world – starting right here at home. Using inter-community dialogues, schools-based programming and applied research projects, among other innovative approaches, the Institute engages with communities of Canadians connected to longstanding overseas conflicts to explore their common commitment to Canada’s fundamental values, strengthen their sense of attachment to each other, and promote constructive acts of “Canadian global citizenship”.
