Keynote Address
by Hon Mahinda Samarasinghe MP,
Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights
at the Seminar on
on "Winning the War to Winning the Peace: Postwar Rebuilding of Society"
organized by the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS)

Taj Samudra Hotel, Colombo,
Friday, 28 August 2009

Mr Chairman/ Madam Chair,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning.

Mr Speaker,

Today, 19 August 2009, marks the commemoration of the first ever World Humanitarian Day. Last December, the United Nations General Assembly decided to commemorate this day to coincide with the death, six years ago of the then Special Representative of the UN Secretary General to Iraq and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sérgio Vieira de Mello. He, along with 21 of his colleagues, tragically lost their lives in the massive Canal Hotel bomb explosion in Baghdad, Iraq. Unfortunately, before that incident and since then, there have been several other incidents in several parts of the world where humanitarian workers have been harmed or killed. Today we

Our experience proves that, landslide disaster affects several areas in Sri Lanka each year.
Even though landslides are limited to only a several areas the damage caused by them affects to a social and economical digress in the entire country.
Even though landslide is a natural hazard and preventing the occurrence of it is extremely complicated, the time has come to mitigate the damage to the life and the property through introducing a disaster management policy.
Within such background, a landslide mitigation project has been implemented under the supervision of Mr. R M S Bandara, Head, Landslide Studies and Services Division and the guidance of Mr. W B J Fernando, the Dire

Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights

Address by Hon Mahinda Samarasinghe MP,
Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights,
in Parliament on 22 July 2009 on the occasion of the
Adjournment Debate on Internally Displaced Persons

Mr Speaker,

I have returned this afternoon from a visit to Vavuniya - a visit that enabled me to see, at first hand, the conditions under which the internally displaced Sri Lankans are being housed and cared for by the Government. I must inform this House t

A national symposium on disaster risk reduction measures and possible ways of adapting to climate change was held at the BMICH, Colombo. Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe was Chief Guest at the occasion, and is shown addressing the symposium in the picture.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------