Involuntary Displacement and Resettlement — Policy and ... - CEPA

nuclear family established through a monogamous marriage (Goonesekera1990: 157). A non-marital cohabitating couple is not a legal family and is notrecognised “by the Sri Lanka law on family relations” (ibid: 159), even ifcohabitation itself is socially recognised and generally accepted (179). A GNwould know about long standing co-habitating arrangements in his/her area,could take this into consideration and award compensation to a non-maritalcohabitating couple if s/he wished. However, the GN is not legally obliged todo so. Unless the GN or the Divisional Secretary (DS) acknowledged suchunions, many families living in a cohabitation arrangement at the time of thetsunami were left behind. In referring to married couples only, the policy setsa context where a single woman, even a woman who was once married, canbe ignored. Such is the case of Sita, a widow:I went to the GN and the DS office so many times. First they said to me,“You are alone you don’t need a house.” Another time they said, “go backto where you were born and get a deed for a piece of land that you can buyfrom there.(Field notes, 26 October 2007)Sita is a Tamil of Indian origin who was born in the Ratnapura District. She isalone; her children have grown up and moved away. She was living in Dehiwalaat the time of the tsunami. Her ability to obtain compensation and the respect oflocal government authorities appears to be inflected by her social position as asingle woman, living alone without sons or other male relatives to help her,compounded by her ethnic minority status that classifies her as a Colombo‘outsider’ (“go buy land in the place that you are from”).Receiving a permanent house is not automatically guaranteed to a marriedwoman either, especially if the new house is titled solely in the husband’sname. This is Mrs. Swarnadurai’s situation. When a new house in adonor-driven scheme was given to her family, the house was written only inher husband’s name. He abandoned the family, claimed the title, and nowlives in the new house with another woman. Even though their home wasreplaced under the house-to-house rule, which does not entitle her family toanything else, she managed 13to obtain Rs. 500,000 and bought a piece of13According to the Section 2.3.4 of the Housing Policy, District Secretaries were requested toprioritise single women and the elderly. Under Section 6, District Secretaries were given discretionarypowers for ‘special cases’ (COHRE 2006: 6). Therefore even though her house had beenreplaced, once her husband left her and took the house, Mrs. Swarnadurai suddenly foundherself in a new social/subject position that quite possibly made her eligible for ‘another’ house.187