The North and East provinces of Sri Lanka were directly affected by conflict, with people facing multiple displacements; loss of life and property; and a pervading sense of insecurity. Resettlement activities are still taking place in the North whereas in the East they are almost complete.
Given this context, the main objective of this paper is to analyse the emerging issue of resource competition between the newly resettled local fishermen and migratory fishermen from the Southern and Western parts of the country. This problem is compounded by the fact that access to the sea is limited in certain strategic areas by the state military due to security reasons in the North and traditional local fishermen are facing the problem of loss of their main livelihood. The local fishermen perceive that the fishermen from outside the region are using non sustainable methods of fishing; more specifically are using unaccepted fishing methods to exploit the fishing resources that belong to North East coast such as banned nets, catching fish using lights etc. The gap in asset ownership of the local fishermen from the conflict affected North and East and those from the South, who operate multi-day boats and beach seines make the inequalities more striking because the locals are the ones who lost their fishing equipment and are unable to compete with external fishermen. Lack of understanding of the regional fishing practices – breeding ground locations and best time to engage in fishing, are disregarded by the latter. Further, fishing livelihood support activities are taking place as humanitarian and development policies without a sound understanding of the local conditions; in inland fishing sub-sector, fingerlings provided are not suitable to the local conditions and in fact cause long lasting adverse effects on the traditional fish stock.

The situation is rife with possibilities of conflict which can erupt into violence if not managed sensitively. Primary data from the North and East provinces in conjunction with published literature on livelihood recovery and resource competition in a post conflict context will form the base of the proposed paper. Following a contextual presentation of fishing as a livelihood in the current context, the analysis will draw on the themes of possible conflict triggering issues in relation to resource competition in fishing and potential mitigation methods in terms of providing alternate livelihood options, and value addition opportunities.