Pathways to Justice: Learning from the past, charting the future in Asia, Sri Lanka (1960–2024) 

The second publication in the Pathways to Justice series traces more than seventy years of The Asia Foundation’s engagement in Sri Lanka’s law and justice sector, situating this trajectory within a political landscape marked by civil conflict, constitutional upheavals, and recurring socio-economic crises. Across this shifting environment, TAF has worked with state institutions and civil society to expand access to justice and strengthen the rule of law through reforms that combine institutional capacity-building, community-based mechanisms, and rights-focused programming. Central to this contribution has been the national institutionalization of legal aid, now delivered through 77 state-funded branch offices and the development of a professionalized mediation system resolving roughly 200,000 disputes annually across 329 divisions. The publication also documents the emergence of community-oriented policing and the scaling of Tamil-language training for Sinhala police officers, innovations that were adopted across 150 stations before later political dynamics constrained further reform. 

From the mid-2010s, gender justice became a defining area of work, generating empirical insights into survivors’ encounters with the justice system and strengthening accountability alongside improved service delivery by women-led organizations. Taken together, the Sri Lanka profile demonstrates how long-term, locally grounded partnerships can generate reform even amid political volatility and evolving donor priorities, while also revealing persistent tensions between long-term structural change and short-term programming cycles. Looking forward, the publication identifies opportunities to deepen cross-country learning within TAF’s regional justice portfolio, integrate psychosocial and mental health support into justice services, and make more explicit the linkages between justice, peacebuilding, social cohesion, and local governance.