Anne Hirlinger

HR: the blog

The blog I chose is called Beyond Borders Sri Lanka (https://beyondborders.wordpress.com).

Beyond Borders is a broader group that also has pages for India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the UK. They are youth-run blogs that aim to give youth an opportunity to voice their opinions on issues that concern them. Some things focused on specifically in Sri Lanka are citizenship education for underprivileged children and training in schools on sexual health as well as HIV/AIDS. They hosted some forums for young people and focused on climate change as well as globalization. They also hosted a youth festival in 2006 that gave over 1000 youth from Sri Lanka and other countries the opportunity to build their political skills. After 2007, they started channeling their efforts into projects concerning conflict, education and used theater as an alternative media source.

I think the concept of the organization and this blog was a really good idea, and it is a shame it got discontinued. I think it’s great that youth were given an opportunity to be politically active online and in person in their communities. My only concern would be how the government of Sri Lanka would view these kids protesting. On one hand, while Sri Lanka guarantees the right to protest in its constitution, the letter of the law is not always carried out and many protests get shut down. I would be concerned from a “parent” standpoint that if my child was involved in a protest that the government didn’t like, or wrote a radical blog online and had their name tied to it, as most of the blog posts do on the site, would that reflect badly not only on the child but on the rest of the family? Would it affect a young person’s ability to get jobs and make them a target of the state? In the UK where they also have a Beyond Borders site, I think it is much safer and more reasonable that kids could use the sit and be politically active, but in a less free country, I would be worried for their safety.