Tips for Getting Facts about Countries

Posted on February 2, 2001

Basic facts

• BUBL's Country Guide at http://bubl.ac.uk/link/countries.html gives you an excellent selection of the best web sites for political background on every country
• Political Resources.Net at http://www.politicalresources.net/ is a top-notch way to find web links in every country
• Find any official government department in the world at http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/

Human Rights

• Human Rights Watch at http://www.hrw.org is the best place to start. Latest news, background dossiers, press archives
• Amnesty International at http://www.amnesty.org with news, links, campaigns
• IGC's Directory of Human Rights at http://www.igc.org/igc/issues/hr has an excellent list of resources
• InterPressService - Human Rights at http://www.ips.org/rights/index.htm has links for weekly news at http://www.ips.org/rights/news/index.htm and archives at http://www.ips.org/rights/archive/index.htm
• Relief Web index at http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/index.phtml has sources for international news on disasters, human rights and development.

See also JNet's Human Rights page

Economy and statistics:

Major newspapers:

• Financial Times:    Check out your countrys vital economic statistics with the Financial Times Country Briefs at http://surveys.ft.com
  
  
• The Economist    at www.economist.com has a Country Briefings section at http://www.economist.com/countries and an extensive list of backgrounders on everything from drugs to racism at http://www.economist.com/library/backgrounders/index.cfm

Major international organizations:

• OECD:    OECD Economic Surveys of Countries at www.oecd.org/eco/surv/esu.htm gives you vital statistics. OECD Statistics at http://www.oecd.org/std/ gives you an analysis by category.
  

• World Bank   at www.worldbank.org/data/ has a rich database of numbers. You can look at the Country Data at http://www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/countrydata.html or by topic at http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/databytopic.html. To read these documents, you will need the Adobe Reader, which is free to download at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html)

United Nations:

• United Nations InfoNation Designed for school children but gives anyone easy access to fast facts at http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/infonation/e_infonation.htm
  
• WHO Statistics Excellent pick-and-choose menu at http://www-nt.who.int/whosis/statistics/reported/reported.cfm?path=statistics,basic,reported&language=english
• World Health Organization Statistical Information System at http://www.who.int/whosis
• United Nations Scientific, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at http://unescostat.unesco.org
• UN Statistics Division at http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/

Other::

• US Library of Congress country profiles at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html#toc
• Inter-American Development Bank: Online databases at http://www.iadb.org/int/sta/ENGLISH/staweb/
  
• Asian Development Bank - Economic and Social Statistics at http://www.adb.org/Economics/default.asp
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Corruption

See our special page on Corruption resources

Poverty

• See our special page on Poverty resources

Foreign investment

See our special page on Foreign Investment resources