20 Years after the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act in Sri Lanka – Call for Articles

In August 2005, the Sri Lanka parliament unanimously passed the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA) No. 34. The Act, which came into effect in October of the same year, allows any person who is suffering or is likely to suffer domestic violence to apply for a protection order from a Magistrate’s Court. Once an application is received, the Magistrate’s Court is empowered to summarily issue an Interim Protection Order (IPO) valid for 14 days. A Protection Order which is valid for 12 months can follow the IPO on the basis of evidence presented before the court. Domestic violence, as defined in the Act, constitutes offenses already recognised under Chapter XVI of the Penal Code under the offense of “physical violence,” as well as “emotional abuse.” The latter is defined as “a pattern of cruel, inhuman, degrading, or humiliating conduct of a serious nature directed toward an ‘aggrieved person’.”

Even though the Act fell short of the expectations of women’s organisations who had lobbied for such a law, it was still an important victory in the ongoing struggle to address violence against women in Sri Lanka, and particularly intimate partner violence. The very existence and possibility of protection orders pose a challenge to popular and dominant narratives that legitimise, trivialise, and normalise intimate partner violence in Sri Lanka. They also enable alternative narratives of violence to be articulated in courthouses and subsequently circulated through authoritative court judgments.

Civil protection orders (CPOs) are part of a repertoire of legal and social interventions promoted by the global women’s movement to stem intimate partner violence. At an individual level, CPOs give complainants the power to invoke the law as a protection measure without the state control inherent in criminal remedies and without criminal sanctions against the perpetrator. Thus CPOs have the potential to ensure immediate relief  by empowering a judge to order the perpetrator to alter his behaviour, leave the home, or cease contact with the applicant.

Twenty years after the enactment of the PDVA, Polity is keen to understand whether the PDVA has made women in Sri Lanka safer in their homes. We invite submissions that illuminate the effect of the law on narratives and discourses about domestic violence, the experiences of women filing cases under the PDVA and those responsible for implementing the PDVA, and implementation gaps. Questions addressed by the submissions may include but are not limited to the following:

• To what extent has the PDVA contributed to challenging discourses that legitimise, trivialise, and normalise domestic violence?
• What are the implementation gaps that have emerged over the last 20 years? Is there need for further law reform?
• To what extent have women experiencing intimate partner violence accessed the PDVA? To what extent do factors such as ethnicity, religion, and age, impact recourse to this law?
• What is women’s experience of applying for and obtaining protection orders? What challenges and obstacles do they face?
• What have lawyers representing survivors of violence learnt from applying for protection orders under PDVA?

We welcome submissions of around 2000 words for commentaries and opinion pieces and 3000-4000 words for essays based on primary and secondary sources. Send your pitches and drafts by 30 June 2025 to the Editors at polity@ssalanka.org