Country profilesSri Lanka

Humanitarian profile

More than 70,000 people were killed in a 25-year civil war between government troops and Tamil Tiger separatists who used to control the north and east of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were uprooted during the fighting which ended in 2009. The island’s Tamil minority accuses the politically and economically dominant Sinhalese of discrimination.

Country snapshot

Sri Lanka was mired in civil war for a quarter century until 2009 when government forces seized control of the northern part of the island held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels.

More than 70,000 people died in the fighting between the Sinhalese majority (nearly three-quarters of the population) and the Tamil minority (around 18 percent of the population), and more than 1 million people were forced to flee their homes.

The Tamils are mainly Hindu and the Sinhalese are Buddhists. Sri Lanka's flag reflects the divide among its population. The lion dominating the flag is a Sinhalese symbol, while a single orange stripe on the left side represents the Tamil minority. Tamils say this reflects their marginalisation.

Sri Lanka is a tropical island about the size of Ireland with a population of around 21 million. It lies about 31 kilometres (19 miles) off the southern tip of India.

Sri Lanka's climate is warm and humid. It is relatively low-lying, although its southern half has a mountain range, reaching 2,524 metres at the highest point.

Part of the British Empire until independence in 1948, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon and was renowned for its tea. Tourism is a major contributor to the Sri Lankan economy.

Sri Lanka's official name is the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and its capital is Colombo which has a population of about 700,000.

Government

Under a 1978 constitution, Sri Lanka has a powerful president who is both head of state and head of the government. The president appoints the prime minister - largely a ceremonial role - and the cabinet.

Sri Lanka was the first country in the world to democratically elect a woman prime minister in 1960.

Mahinda Rajapaksa won the last presidential election in January 2010 after defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels, giving him a second consecutive term in office - the maximum allowed by the constitution. The presidential term is set for six years.

Sri Lanka has 25 districts organised into nine provinces. Parliament has 225 seats and is elected through proportional representation for a six-year term.

In May 2010, Sri Lanka relaxed powerful wartime emergency rules enacted in 2005 after the foreign minister was allegedly killed by the LTTE. The regulations had given the government wide powers to arrest and detain people without any charges, and have been used by successive governments since 1971 aiming to curb unrest in the island nation.

Economy

Despite Sri Lanka's long period of civil war, economic growth was around 10 percent for most of this century's first decade. In 2008, the economy was worth about $40 billion, about the same size as Serbia.

Like other developing nations, the global financial crisis of 2008 hit Sri Lanka hard. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in with a $2.6 billion loan, but the economy has since stabilised and the stock market doubled in value in 2009.

Sri Lanka is categorised as a lower-middle income country. Yet its life expectancy of 72 years and literacy rate of 91 percent are far higher than its south Asian neighbours India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The biggest growth sectors are food processing and textiles. The government has invested in small and medium-sized businesses as well as the country's large civil service.

The end of the civil war means there are many reconstruction opportunities in the north and east of the island.

History

Sri Lanka's position in the Indian Ocean makes it a strategically important point on trade routes between Asia and Europe. The island was colonised by Portugal and the Netherlands in the 16th century, and then absorbed into the British Empire in the 19th century.

The country gained independence from Britain in 1948, changing its name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka in 1978.

The growth of Sinhalese nationalism in the decades after independence alienated many Tamils, eventually spurring calls for a separate homeland or "Eelam" in the north and east of the country. The biggest of the rebel groups to emerge was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), founded in 1976 and also known as the Tamil Tigers.

War broke out in 1983 when the Tigers ambushed and killed an army patrol, sparking anti-Tamil riots. In the on-off war that followed, most of the fighting took place in the north of the country, but there were also bomb attacks and assassinations in the capital Colombo.

The Tamil Tigers were one of the first groups to use modern-day suicide bombers. Government forces eventually defeated the rebels in 2009, interning about 250,000 Tamils in camps immediately after the fighting.

Human rights groups have urged the United Nations to investigate potential war crimes at the end of the war, repeating charges that tens of thousands died in the final months.

The government has repeatedly rejected the charges of civilian deaths as grossly exaggerated, and denied that any of its security forces committed war crimes or rights violations.

Legal snapshot

Sri Lanka's legal system reflects its colonial past, and is a highly complex mixture of English common law and Roman-Dutch law along with Kandyan and Jaffna-Tamil law. Muslim Special Laws apply to the Muslim minority on family issues.

The president appoints the judges of the top courts - the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.

Trials at High Courts are conducted by the state through the Attorney-General's Department. Only some have a jury. Murder trials and offenses against the state are tried at the High Court; other criminal offenses are tried at a Magistrate's Court.

Sri Lanka's position in Transparency International's 180-nation Corruption Perceptions Index has worsened in recent years, as it slips to near 100th place. This suggests public-sector corruption is seen to be on the rise.