Abstract:
Sri Lanka being a country with a mixed legal system, different
groups of people in the country get governed by different set of personal
laws; Kandyan, Muslim and Thesawalamai law. These laws contain
discriminative provisions especially for women mainly in the areas of
divorce, succession, and property rights. This study will only focus on land
and property rights. These discriminatory laws and provisions were recently
highlighted in the observations of the CEDAW committee report. These
differences became more apparent when arranging resettlement process for
the displaced families and reallocating land after the civil war and the
Tsunami disaster. Most of these households are headed by women as men in
the families had got either killed in the battle or disappeared. Most of these
women have been prevented from acquiring ownership of these lands and
accessing to other services as a result of the application of the head of the
household concept in state administrative practices and also in some other
instances because of the applicability of the said personal laws. Although
this has become a major practical issue when reallocating lands and in the
process of resettlement, it has not been addressed or discussed in the recent
report of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee. This study will look
at the possibility of a uniformity law and awarding joint ownership when
allocating state lands and also abolishing the concept of Head of Household
from state administrative practices.
