page_title: Sri Lankan Civil War
section_title: Internally displaced people
hierarchical_section_title: Sri Lankan Civil War / Aftermath / Humanitarian Impact / Internally displaced people
caption_attribution_description: DFID-funded, UNHCR emergency shelter tents, inside the Menik Farm camp for displaced people, near Vavuniya, Sri Lanka, 16 June 2009 Picture: Department for International Development / Russell Watkins
context_page_description: The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in the island country of Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, there was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island due to the continuous discrimination against the Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan Government, as well as the 1956, 1958 and 1977 anti-Tamil pogroms and the 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library carried out by the majority Sinhalese mobs, in the years following Sri Lanka's independence from Britain in 1948. After a 26-year military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, bringing the civil war to an end.
  For over 25 years, the war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and the economy of the country, with an initial estimated 80,000–100,000 people killed during its course.
context_section_description: Towards the end of the war, as Sri Lankan government forces advanced deeper into Tamil Tiger controlled areas, international concern grew for the fate of the 350,000 civilians trapped. On 21 January 2009, the Sri Lankan military declared a 32 square kilometres (12.4 mi) Safe Zone located northwest of Puthukkudiviruppu, between the A35 Highway and the Chalai Lagoon. Sri Lankan Air Force aircraft dropped leaflets urging civilians to relocate to the safe zone and wait until the army could move them into safer locations. The Sri Lankan military promised not to fire into the area. However, only small numbers of civilians actually crossed into the Safe Zone, and the Sri Lankan government, the United Nations, and human rights organisations accused the LTTE of preventing civilians from leaving. The fighting eventually caused civilians to flee the safe zone to a narrow strip of land between Nanthi Kadal and the Indian Ocean. The Sri Lankan military declared a new 10-square-kilometre (3.9 sq mi) Safe Zone northwest of Mullaitivu on 12 February. Over the next three months, the Sri Lankan military repeatedly attacked the Safe Zone with aircraft and artillery to destroy the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers trapped there. The Sri Lankan government claimed that it was trying to hit Tamil Tiger positions, and claimed that these raids started on 15 February and ended on 19 April, the day before the Army breached Tamil Tiger defences, and civilians started to pour out. However, these attacks caused heavy damage. Thousands of civilians were killed or injured, and the Tamil Tigers reportedly held many as human shields.
  The final stages of the war created 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were transferred to camps in Vavuniya District and detained there against their will. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire. This, together with the conditions inside the camps, attracted much criticism from inside and outside Sri Lanka. After the end of the civil war President Rajapaksa gave assurances to foreign diplomats that the bulk of the IDPs would be resettled in accordance with the 180-day plan. By January 2012, almost all the IDPs had been resettled, except 6,554 from the Divisional Secretariats of Mullaitivu district, where the de-mining work was yet to be finished.
  Since 1983, the civil war caused mass outflow of Tamil civilians from Sri Lanka to South India. After the end of the war, nearly 5,000 of them returned to the country. As of July 2012, 68,152 Sri Lankans were living in South India as refugees.
caption: DFID-funded UN IDP camp near Vavuniya: the Menik Farm camp, June 2009
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