Sri Lanka Country Information
Fact and Figures
Location - Southern Asia, island in the Indian Ocean, south of India
Capital - Colombo
Population - 21.5 million
People - Sinhalese 73.8%, Sri Lankan Moors 7.2%, Indian Tamil 4.6%, Sri Lankan Tamil 3.9%, other 0.5%, unspecified 10% (2001 census provisional data)
Language - Sinhala (official and national language) 74%, Tamil (national language) 18%, other 8%
note: English is commonly used in government and is spoken competently by about 10% of the population
Religion - Buddhist 69.1%, Muslim 7.6%, Hindu 7.1%, Christian 6.2%, unspecified 10% (2001 census provisional data)
Literacy rate - 90.7
Life expectancy - 75.3
% Living below $1.25/day - 14
Sources - The CIA World Fact Book 2008,
Compassion International,
www.news.bbc.co.uk,
unicef.org
Sri Lanka
The island nation of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, comprises of two primary ethnic groups — the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The first colonial power to arrive on the island was the Portuguese in 1505. The Dutch India Company later took possession from 1658 to 1796. Then the British took control, and in 1802 Ceylon became an English Crown colony.
Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka ("resplendent island") in 1972 and tensions between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), began to escalate. War erupted in 1983 and by early 2000 nearly 64,000 lives, mostly civilians, had been lost in the war.
In May 2009, the government announced the defeat of the LTTE and the death of its leader, but an affirmative peace deal remains elusive. The war forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes interrupting the lives of countless children and placing them in unsafe environments – without adequate access to education, inadequate health facilities and with little protection from child abuse and exploitation. The war was marked by an ongoing recruitment of child soldiers by the LTTE, a situation which continues today.
Sri Lanka was dealt a further blow in 2004 when the tsunami killed tens of thousands and saw many more Sri Lankans plunged further into poverty as they lost homes and livelihoods.
Compassion's work in Sri Lanka began in 2010, with local churches reaching out to more than 1,000 babies and their mothers through partnership with Compassion's Child Survival Programme. This programme is designed to rescue and nurture children from the time of conception to age four who would otherwise have a very low chance of survival or healthy development.
Compassion Sri Lanka has 14 Child Survival Programmes.
Compassion Sri Lanka does not currently have any Child Sponsorship Programmes.
Compassion Sri Lanka does not have any Leadership Development Programme students yet.