Fellow Fridays Featuring Bhavani Fonseka
Accountability, democracy and activism with Bhavani Fonseka
Asia Society India Centre spoke with Bhavani Fonseka, Senior Researcher and Attorney at Law with the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Sri Lanka. Bhavani is a prominent human rights lawyer; the focus of her work has been legal and policy reforms, public interest litigation (PIL), as well as assisting victims and affected populations across Sri Lanka. Bhavani is a prolific writer and editor, who most recently edited Elusive Justice and Emblematic Cases in Sri Lanka and co-edited Salient Aspects of Public Interest Litigation Jurisprudence in Sri Lanka. In addition to being an Asia 21 Fellow (Class of 2010), she has also been a Mason Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and an Eisenhower Fellow. Asia Society India Centre spoke to her about democratic accountability, activism in Sri Lanka, and how the questions of her work are relevant to our lives across South Asia.
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your work and what led you to work in constitutional law in Sri Lanka?
My name is Bhavani Fonseka, and I’m a lawyer and researcher based in Colombo, Sri Lanka with the Centre for Policy Alternatives. My work has been around constitution and human rights policy issues for the last nearly two decades. This really came about as a result of the issues that I grew up with in Sri Lanka, the injustices and the discrimination that raised a lot of questions in terms of how citizens should be treated as equal, with dignity — that there needs to be a better system, a kind of structure in place to ensure that all citizens are given the same due process and have the same standards and benefits. So it's really linked to my experience growing up in a country that has seen decades of violence, a near three-decade conflict. And we continue to have these challenges in terms of structural violence, inequality, getting accountability and reconciliation. It's a whole host of issues but it’s directly linked to my experience growing up in a country that has seen too much violence.
That's really admirable. So in addition to your work as a lawyer and legal researcher, you also work as a human rights activist. You were a member of the China Tribunal and the Court of the Citizens of the World. Given that you also participate in the broader landscape of human rights law and activism, what would you say is the landscape of these issues in Sri Lanka and South Asia?
So my work is very much linked to what's happening in Sri Lanka, but I do try to be engaged and follow issues around the world, especially in the Asian region and particularly in South Asia. One of the things that comes through with all this work is just the continuing challenge in terms of people being recognised as equal citizens of the world, equal citizens of a particular country and having accountability and a government that serves its citizens. It's not just about Sri Lanka but across the world, across the region.There's much work to be done.
I've done a lot of work within Sri Lanka; One of the other things we've been doing for the last decade and more is raising Sri Lanka in the international forums. That has resulted in several resolutions that have been brought at the UN Human Rights Council on Sri Lanka, just to ensure that there is recognition in terms of human rights accountability and reconciliation. That also made me work with a whole range of actors internationally as well as in Asia: activists, lawyers who speak to very similar issues in different countries from Bangladesh to the Philippines to Malaysia to… I think this region shows the many continuing challenges. We need to come together in terms of solidarity, in fighting injustices and fighting for equal rights for all citizens. Not just one country or one community, it should be the norm everywhere. That's a starting point in some of the global regional work that I've been involved in.
You’ve been a part of the Asia 21 Next Generation Fellowship, which is about recognising young leaders from Asia who have the power to shape the future through innovation and entrepreneurship and social change. What do you think makes a good leader, given the intricacies of South Asian culture and experience and the challenges of adapting conventional ideas to work through situations that will need culturally specific solutions?
I first came across that and was part of the initial programme in 2010, so it's been a while. What’s great with that group and the people you meet is that you just come across a whole diverse range of individuals in different sectors. So it's not just what you're working on, you're exposed to a whole lot more. Your common link is Asia and the US, but you meet filmmakers, artists, entrepreneurs, people who work in the state, in government, and more. And I think that's very important in the work we do, that you're exposed to different viewpoints, sometimes contesting and competing viewpoints. You may not always be on the same page, but it's also important to have conversations.
A lot of the challenges we have are when there's no conversation and debate. And I think what's integral is that one is able to freely express themselves. Agree to disagree, but freely express, freely debate and see different perspectives. So Asia 21 was great because it really just opened my eyes and some of the friends I met in 2008-09 continue to be friends. We've stayed in touch, and it's such a great way to just be in touch with each other and exchange ideas. Some who come to Sri Lanka will drop a message saying I'm coming, or if I go to a country, I drop a message. So it just makes the global network much more tangible. It's still huge, but you still feel there's a connection.
Are there other Asia 21 fellows from your cohort or otherwise whose work has kind of inspired you over the years?
I don't think one can say there is one individual, because over the years, I've met such remarkable individuals who do remarkable work. So there is no one person that stands out. But some of them — again, I don't want to say it's the women or the men — but some of the women who I came across in the program have been just remarkable. From Menaka, the constitutional lawyer from India to Sharmeen in Pakistan, there's just been some really fabulous individuals, but I wouldn't say it's one or two. I think each cohort has some real stars, who do fabulous work in their own field. Then there are also the individuals you just have a connection with, and you stay in touch.
All I can say is that Asia 21 manages to bring some very, very special people. And they've all been excellent in my interactions. I've never had a bad experience. Let's put it that way.
That's incredible. Speaking of community, mentorship is a huge part of leadership and our leadership programs at Asia Society. What has been your experience with mentorship, both receiving it and giving it? And how would you say it's kind of shaped the path of your career?
I think mentorship is so important. For me, it was never a structured mentorship. I had different individuals who took over in different kinds of work I did, from the law to my human rights activism.
And they just kind of adopted me, took over and gave me advice. They took me to court or took me to the field site. It was just excellent to be part of someone much more senior’s experience, to learn and try to understand the things one needs to be aware of. The things not to do, how to be more empathetic and sensitive, and then to know that it's important to pass those lessons to the younger generation, and build it up. We are stronger when we are within a community, working together. Working as a team is much more important than trying to do work on one's own. You can't fight these battles on your own.
So over the years or over the decades now, there's been a lot of young people who've come through and done internships with me, young lawyers, young activists. And every year, I have several interns who are students, those either waiting to enter university or in university or recent graduates, who come through.
In different ways, it’s also encouraging people to get involved, either through a proper internship or otherwise through large activism, large litigation advocacy. So whatever it is, I think that's important that we learn, we continue to learn, I continue to learn. And that we pass those lessons to the younger, newer actors and learn from them as well. Because trust me, the younger generation have a lot of lessons that we need to learn, and we need to listen to them as well!
What would you say those are, if you had to give an example? What's the difference between this new generation that's coming up and what it was like for you?
Well, one of the things that speaks directly to my experience in Sri Lanka is that for decades, people who were there before me, all of us were working towards democracy, accountability, greater recognition of human rights. And we've kept at it. That kind of citizen mobilisation and agitation really has had an impact in different ways in challenging laws and holding individuals accountable. But in 2022, Sri Lanka went through this economic crisis that saw a whole huge citizen mobilisation come about.
Now, that didn't happen in a vacuum. That was built over the decades by different groups, communities who really kept issues alive, pushed back. But the 2022 mobilisation that came was very much pushed by younger people, young activists, young students, like students, artists, professionals who just said, we are going to fight this and we're getting to the streets, we're going to do it peacefully, but we won't change. We're not going to sit around. We want it now.
And they taught us too that we need to push as much as we can, peacefully and democratically, to get change. So we've been doing it for decades, but these young, lots of young activists, young protestors came and said, no, we're not going to take anything anymore. We will just encamp. We will sit in and just wait till that change happens. And it happened! A very powerful president had to resign and flee the country. A very powerful government had to resign. So a lesson for us was that we also have to adapt. We have to also go with the flow. We can't be just saying, we did this for decades or years and that's how it's done. No, you adapt, you find new solidarities, you find new energy, new ideas.
So that, I would say, is a good example where they learned from us, we learned from them and it actually had a tangible impact.
That's very lovely. And it speaks very well to what's happening in Bangladesh right now and it’s proof, hopefully, of some greater change.The Sri Lanka presidential elections are maybe a month away now, less than a month even. So what are you working on that's very exciting for you? Because election season is always exciting. We had our elections recently and I was just locked in.
And your election gave us hope that you have to keep at it and keep pushing. It really gave us hope that we also can do this. So elections — this will be the first election after the economic crisis and the citizen mobilisation. There is a new energy that hopefully some of the things that we saw in 2022 will get reflected in the campaign, in the manifestos. And it's really now, this week and next week, that we're going to see candidates putting out their policy positions.
It’s a very interesting time to see how much is reflected by the demands of the people. And for me, really, I’m trying to see who is able to articulate the positions on human rights, on reconciliation, on democracy, on accountability, on the rule of law and to keep pushing because I think an election opens those windows. And it's important that as citizens, we don't lose that opportunity, we keep up the pressure.
The elections and beyond are going to be very interesting in getting the key stakeholders to hear and to promise certain things that we then need to make sure are implemented. An election alone is not going to solve the problem. The election is just one aspect, but making sure that that change is possible and we stay the course is another. The problem is there are so many spoilers in that process as well — it's a lot of work. But I also feel it's a very exciting time.