Peace in Sri Lanka: Negotiating with the Northern ‘Separatists’? Dr. Colin Irwin Institute of Irish Studies University of Liverpool www.peacepolls.org August 2008 About this poll Peace was achieved in Northern Ireland, after many years of bitter conflict, failed negotiations and broken ceasefires only when all the parties to the conflict and the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland were brought together in the same peace process. As part of that process a series of ‘peace polls’ were run to find out what the people wanted in terms of a just and lasting settlement. The first such peace poll run in Sri Lanka was completed between March and May 2008 in collaboration with the staff of Social Indicator of Colombo and Dr. Colin Irwin from the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool who developed the peace polls method. That poll included a random sample of 1,700 people from all parts of Sri Lanka with the exception of the Northern Province. As Social Indicator are presently not able to operate in this region of Sri Lanka arrangements were made for a separate poll to be undertaken by the academic community in Jaffna. This new poll was run in June and repeated all the questions asked in the previous poll with 200 interviews completed in 5 Divisional Secretariats (DS). The results are presented below but it should be noted that the ‘don’t knows’ have been excluded from these calculations in order to improve the clarity of presentation. However the full results of both polls are available at the project website http://www.peacepolls.org along with a more detailed explanation of the methodology used.