Charles Haviland Sri Lanka Correspondent

Although it’s a socially conservative country, in the past many have undergone religious marriage ceremonies without getting legal backing.

Officials told the BBC that in one camp for displaced people in eastern Sri Lanka there’s an especially high number of families where the mother and father are not technically married.

Birth Certificates

This creates problems for their children in particular. They don’t have birth certificates – and that’s an obstacle as they reach school age.

So legal aid officers have been holding meetings to make them aware of the benefits of formally tying the knot.

Many are now doing so, helped by funding from the Norwegian Refugee Council and the UN Development Programme.

The war itself stopped many people actually marrying. It meant that many legal rules were not followed, the chairman of the Legal Aid Commission told the BBC.

Whether Muslim or Hindu, Buddhist or Christian, many went through religious ceremonies, which was enough to have their relationship, and later their children, accepted without any stigma.

Humanitarian priority

Some did this to avoid recruitment by the Tamil Tigers – or to remove the army’s suspicion of single people as potential militants.

The official said technically unmarried couples are especially common in the former war zone but exist in traditional communities all over the country.

He described it as a “humanitarian priority” to secure legal marriages for such people.