While income levels and resettlement confidence have improved in Sri Lanka’s war-affected northern and eastern provinces, land disputes remain a major barrier to lasting peace, according to the UN Sri Lanka SDG Fund Results Report 2024.
The report, released this week, revealed that a household monitoring survey conducted in February 2025 found 80% of targeted individuals had experienced increased incomes, with a moderate rise in living standards. It also noted that 75% of resettled families expressed high confidence in the resettlement process, indicating tangible progress on post-war recovery.
However, these gains are being undermined by unresolved land disputes. The report warns that issues surrounding land access, ownership, and distribution continue to fuel tension, particularly in the Northern and Eastern provinces, which were the epicenters of the nearly three-decade civil conflict that ended in May 2009.
“These land disputes often involve multiple state actors, including the military, the Department of Archaeology, Wildlife and Forest Conservation authorities, and the Mahaweli Authority,” the report stated. From 2020 to 2024 alone, at least 50 unresolved land cases were identified in the Eastern Province.
The $4.6 million fund deployed by the UN SDG initiative in 2024 played a vital role in facilitating resettlement and reintegration programs. A separate review of UK support for these efforts also found that thousands of returnees, including former refugees and internally displaced persons, had seen significant improvements in their quality of life.
But the lingering land ownership issues, often linked to militarization, bureaucratic inertia, and overlapping state authority claims, threaten to unravel some of the trust and progress rebuilt over the years.
The report reinforces a long-standing demand from civil society actors: that reconciliation in Sri Lanka must go beyond economic indicators and ensure justice in land ownership. Without addressing these structural inequalities, the report suggests, true peace in the North and East will remain out of reach for many families still displaced, economically vulnerable, and socially excluded, more than 15 years after the end of the civil war.
