Living in painful uncertainty: ‘Half-Widows’ in Sri Lanka Seek Truth and Justice – Enforced Disappearances
Written speech by Mrs. Leeladevi Anandanadarajah,
General Secretary of ARED – the Association for Relatives of the Enforced Disappearances in the North and East Provinces of Sri Lanka.
ARED is a member of the Widows for Peace Network.
The following written speech was uploaded to the CSW70 platform as part of the Widows for Peace Parallel Event at NGO CSW70:
Accessing Justice in the Chaos of Conflict: Widows and Half-widows Seek Emergency Justice.
Many of our loved ones were forcibly disappeared after surrendering to the Sri Lankan military at the end of the war in Mullivaikkal.
A war may end on paper, but for thousands of Tamil women in Sri Lanka, the suffering of war has never ended.
Many women lost their husbands during the conflict and now live as widows, carrying the heavy burden of grief while struggling to raise their children alone.
But there is another group of women whose suffering is even more painful and often invisible — the wives of the forcibly disappeared, commonly referred to as “half-widows.”
For widows, the tragedy is certain. They know their husbands are gone. Although the pain never disappears, they are able, over time, to begin the difficult process of mourning and rebuilding their lives.
The wives of the disappeared
But the wives of the disappeared live in a far more cruel reality.
They do not know whether their husbands are alive or dead.
Every morning, they wake up with a fragile hope that one day their loved ones may return. Every night they go to sleep with the same unanswered question.
Their lives remain suspended in painful uncertainty.
They cannot properly mourn their husbands because there is still hope.
At the same time, they cannot rebuild their lives because the truth is unknown.
They are forced to live between hope and despair.
For years, these courageous women have been protesting peacefully, standing on roadsides under the sun and rain, holding photographs of their loved ones and asking a simple question:
“Where are they?”
Their demand is not political.
It is a fundamental human right — the right to know the truth.
Behind every disappeared person is a family still waiting:
a wife whose life is frozen in uncertainty,
and children who grow up without answers.
Without truth, there can be no justice.
Without justice, there can be no genuine reconciliation.
Until the fate of the disappeared is revealed and properly documented, thousands of women will continue to live in a prison of uncertainty.
The world must not look away.
Because enforced disappearance does not only take away a person — it condemns entire families, especially women, to a lifetime of waiting.
The relatives of the forcibly disappeared are not asking for revenge.
They are asking for truth, recognition, and justice.
Until the truth is revealed, the war has not truly ended for these families.
Read more
Legacy of enforced disappearances haunts Sri Lanka – ohchr.org