Congress's role in the United States' relationship with Sri Lanka is not limited exclusively to oversight of the Administration's policy. Congress's role also includes decisions on a range of legislative issues including foreign assistance funding for democracy promotion, good governance, ethnic and religious reconciliation, demining, foreign military financing, and other measures. In this context, Sri Lanka may be of increasing interest to Members as the country's progress on constitutional and democratic reforms and ethnic reconciliation unfolds in the year ahead. One question that may trigger increased congressional interest, for example, is whether what some observers may see as inadequate progress in furthering ethnic reconciliation should inhibit the United States' further developing bilateral relations, especially at a time when China has been seeking to develop and expand its trade, investment, and geopolitical influence in Sri Lanka and the broader Indian Ocean region. This report provides the context within which Congress will make both programmatic and oversight decisions, covering questions such as: What is the nature and direction of Sri Lanka's political landscape and democratic reform process? What is Sri Lanka's geopolitical position in the Indian Ocean region? What are the primary considerations Congress should have in mind as it addresses decisions related to Sri Lanka? Should Congress place requirements on the new Administration as it develops its policy toward Sri Lanka? The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, known as Ceylon until 1972, is a constitutional democracy in South Asia with relatively high levels of development. It is an island nation located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern tip of India's Deccan Peninsula. Sri Lanka was settled by successive waves of migration from India beginning in the 5 th century BC. Indo-Aryans from northern India established Sinhalese Buddhist kingdoms in the central part of the island. Tamil Hindus from southern India also settled in northeastern coastal areas and established a kingdom on the Jaffna Peninsula. Beginning in the 16 th century, Sri Lanka was colonized in succession by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Although Ceylon gained its independence from Britain peacefully in 1948, succeeding decades were marred by ethnic conflict between the country's Sinhalese majority, clustered in the densely populated south and west, and a largely Hindu Tamil minority living in the northern and eastern provinces. Following independence, the Tamils increasingly found themselves as objects of discrimination by the Sinhalese-dominated government, which made Sinhala the sole official language and gave preferences to Sinhalese in university admissions and government jobs. The Sinhalese, who had deeply resented British favoritism toward the Tamils, saw themselves not only as a domestic majority, however, but also as a minority in a larger geographic context that includes over 60 million Tamils across the Palk Strait in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in India. From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka's political, social, and economic development was constrained by ethnic conflict and war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers. The war claimed over an estimated 70,000 lives. The LTTE rebels had sought to establish a separate state or internal self-rule in the Tamil-dominated areas of the islands' north and east, and the United States designated the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. After a violent end to the civil war in May 2009, when the military crushed LTTE forces and precipitated a humanitarian emergency in Sri Lanka's Tamil-dominated north, significant international attention turned to whether the government had the ability and intention to build a stable peace in Sri Lanka. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, elected in 2005, faced criticism for what political opponents deemed to be an insufficient response to reported war crimes, a nepotistic and ethnically biased government, increasing restrictions on media, and uneven economic development. In January 2015 presidential elections he was challenged from within his own party and defeated by now President Maithripala Sirisena. This result was affirmed in parliamentary elections later in 2015 that led to the formation of the National Unity Government. (See below for more information on political parties.) President Sirisena has pledged to reduce the authority of the executive presidency and has ushered in a period of constitutional and political reform. Sri Lanka ("the resplendent island" in Sanskrit) has an executive presidency with a unicameral 225-member parliament. Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected for five-year terms under a modified proportional electoral system. The next parliamentary and presidential elections are due in 2020. The president is elected for a five-year term by universal suffrage. The president may serve a maximum of two terms. The president may also dissolve parliament four-and-a-half years after the start of the current parliamentary session. The 13 th amendment to the constitution, passed in 1987, calls for devolution of central powers to nine directly elected provincial councils. This amendment, which was designed to meet Tamil demands for autonomy, has not been fully implemented. Sri Lanka is in the midst of a constitutional reform process that has the potential to transform its political system and reinvigorate its democracy. Freedom House, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization focused on democracy and human rights, noted in 2016 improved civil liberties and political rights. It gave Sri Lanka an upward trend arrow "due to generally free and fair elections for president in January and parliament in August [2015], and improved conditions for freedom of expression, religious freedom, civil society, and judicial independence under the new administration." Sri Lankan politics is dominated by the right-of-center United National Party (UNP) and the socialist Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The current government is a national unity government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's UNP and President Sirisena's SLFP. The SLFP is expected to split, as a rival faction within the party loyal to former President Rajapaksa has formed the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (Sri Lanka People's Front). Observers expect this development to place strains on the coalition and weaken the president. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is the main umbrella political organization representing Tamil interests, and favors greater devolution of power to the provinces. The People's Liberation Front, or Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), is a Marxist-Leninist party, and the smaller Sri Lanka Muslim Congress party represents Sri Lankan Muslims who are generally located in the country's east. The United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) is a political alliance that includes the SLFP and a number of smaller political parties. The national unity government was initially declared in 2015 for a period of two years, but in July 2016 this was extended to the full five-year term. Some observers see a high likelihood that, over the next year, political tensions will rise over a lack of devolution of power to the provinces. Figure 2 and Table 1 identify the vote received and parliamentary seats for each party. Buddhist religious and Sinhalese ethnic identity are key components of political ideology in Sri Lanka: "Buddhism was highlighted as the essence of the Sinhala identity by the ideologues of the [Buddhist] revival" of the mid-19 th century. According to this ideology, all of Sri Lanka is considered the homeland of the Sinhalese Buddhists. The ideology, according to one prominent analyst, emphasizes "the need to guard Sinhalese people and Buddhism against alien forces." Today, Buddhist-Sinhalese nationalism remains a powerful political force in Sri Lanka. While many Sinhalese "are amenable to sharing power with the minorities, nationalistic forces within the community continue to subsume moderate voices." Many observers in the West, whose understanding of Buddhism may be shaped at least in part by exposure to the teachings of Buddhist leaders such as the Dalai Lama among others, may be unfamiliar with ethno-nationalistic, and at times militant, forms of Buddhism that are used as a mobilizing ideology in Sri Lanka among other places. Contemporary Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist groups, such as Sinha Le ("Lion's Blood") and Bodu Bala Sena (BBS "Buddhist Power Force"), continue to exert political influence in Sri Lanka. This is of importance to the current political scene, as the presence of such groups may make it more difficult to achieve reconciliation with the Tamil community. Sinha Le reportedly plays on fears in the Sinhalese community that Sinhalese-Buddhist culture is under threat and that the Tamil agenda represents an existential threat to Sri Lanka. In the words of one analyst, [I]t is imprudent, perhaps even dangerous, to ignore Sinha Le's appeal among some within Sri Lanka's Sinhala-Buddhist majority. Sinha Le's burst of popularity, combined with BBS's outspokenness on a range of concerns, speak to an undercurrent of ethnic tension that, if left unheeded, may present a greater obstacle to Sri Lanka's tenuous road to reconciliation and the government's transitional justice commitments. This tension becomes apparent when considering the contentious subject of power sharing or devolution in Sri Lanka's post war environment and the government's reconciliation agenda. Within this context, Congress may consider the view of some observers that applying pressure on Sri Lanka for rapid accommodation of Tamil demands as part of the transitional justice agenda may prove to be counterproductive by undermining political support for the Sirisena government from within the Sinhalese community. From this perspective, such a situation might open the way for another government that could prove to be less open to ethnic reconciliation or political reform. President Sirisena campaigned on a promise of reducing the powers of the executive presidency and returning Sri Lanka to a parliamentary democracy.