Finding Information on Countries (1999)

Posted on January 2, 1999

Want the find Saddam Hussein's email address? Need to know what the infant mortality rate is in Haiti? Your government has just signed a major trade deal with Turkey and you what the lowdown on that country?

Using the proper resources can get you these and other facts in a snap.

SOME HELP FROM THE CIA

A good start is the CIA Factbook's Country Profiles. (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/country.html) Before they topple a government, the spooks at the CIA have to gather a lot of information on that country and the good people at the CIA are kind enough to share it with us.

Click on any country and get quick statistics on everything from life expectancy, GNP and trade exports to how many telephones and airports the country has. (Haiti, by the way, has a staggering infant mortality rate of 97.64 deaths/1,000 live births)

For more than just raw data, try BUBL's Country Index, (http://bubl.ac.uk/link/countries.html) a useful guide prepared by librarians from the United Kingdom.

For every country BUBL provides a half dozen key, high-quality academic resources, including the CIA's data and the often blunt Human Rights Report by the US State department. You'll also find political links, maps and historical background.

Another comprehensive site is Agora, (http://www.agora.stm.it/politic/) with lists of official government sites, election results and political news.

Human Rights Watch,( http://www.hrw.org/hrw/pubweb) Amnesty (http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/index.html) and other monitoring groups also provide excellent background on many countries. All of these reports are available on one convenient site at http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/refworld/country/country.htm

OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT SITES

Let's say you also want to see some official government pages - the president of Iran, for example; a regional court in Bavaria, Germany; or the web page of one of the Flemish parties in Belgium.

Governments on the Web (http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/) does an impressive job of cataloguing hundreds of sites for every country. Iran, for example, has 23 pages, including President Khatemi's home page.

Each country also has a separate section for Courts, which you can also access through Law Courts on the Web. (http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/courts.html) There are dozens of courts in Bavaria, for instance (with a helpful translation of the official title of each one)

Political Parties on the Web (http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/parties.html) zeroes in on all shades of parties, official or otherwise. ( Belgium, by the way, has three official Flemish parties).

EMAIL AND PHONE NUMBERS

Need to contact a local governor in Argentina in a hurry, because there has been a major natural disaster there or an airplane crash? Want to fax, call or email a government leader?

Heads of State (http://www.trytel.com/~aberdeen/) is a personal site put together by a dedicated political activist, Donald Vermithrax, who apparently believes the world's citizens should have access to their leaders. He does a valiant job of trying to keep up to date with power changes, coups and elections. And while some of his information is out of date, much of it is incredibly useful.

Go to any country and you will find whatever is available: At a minimum, names and addresses of government leaders. Usually, phone numbers and fax numbers for presidents and prime ministers (obviously not personal numbers - their official numbers, but still, that's a start). Many countries are surprisingly detailed: down to provincial, state or regional rulers.

And often there are official web pages or email addresses for politicians. Even a separate email list at http://www.trytel.com/~aberdeen/elinx.html. Saddam doesn't give out his email address in Baghdad, by the way. But you can get his email address of his mission at the union.

And a way to email to the president of Iran, the president of Austria, the prime minister of Jamaica...