Speaker Profile: Dr Darini Rajasingham Senanayake

Dr Darini Rajasingham Senanayake is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. She was formerly a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Studies, Open University of Sri Lanka. Since 1993, she was a Senior Fellow at the International Center for Ethnic Studies, and the Social Scientist’s Association in Colombo.

She has worked for various United Nations Agencies, international non-government organisations, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. In 2005, she was appointed as a member of the International Steering Committee on “Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture”. She was a founding member of the Women’s Coalition for Peace in Sri Lanka and was the chairperson of the Drafting Committee for a Multicultural National Vision for Peace in Sri Lanka.

Darini has held various international research fellowships like the Fulbright New Century Scholarship; Asia Fellowship; and a Social Science Research Council-Macarthur Foundation Fellowship. She has also been Centre Fellow at New York University’s International Center for Advanced Studies, Columbia University’s Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Brandeis University, and her MA and Ph.D are from Princeton University.

ABSTRACT

South Asia between Co-operation and Conflict: Globalization, Peace Building, Violence

South Asia at this time promises higher growth than most of the rest of the world. India’s markets it is hoped may lead global economic recovery in a region that is home to 39.2 percent of the world’s population. What is often missed in the currently popular narrative of “Asia Rising” is that South Asia is second only to sub-Saharan Africa in the global poverty count. About 540 million people or 45 percent of the population live below the poverty line, with daily incomes of less than one dollar. The sub-continent also boasts two nuclear powers and some of the world’s most violent, internationally and regionally networked armed conflicts; from Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention troubled peace and post/conflict reconstruction processes in Nepal in the north and Sri Lanka in the South, as well as, violence along borders, internal and external, in India.

Therefore there is a need to re-think the current state-centric regional security approach to a more comprehensive human security framework that entails poverty reduction, inclusive development and peace building. Otherwise, the risk is that economic gains to the South Asia region in a time of global economic re-orientation and restructuring may be whittled away though conflict, insecurity and militarization.