Description: These publications include facts about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty. The Notes are updated/revised by the Office of Electronic Information and Publications of the Bureau of Public Affairs as they are received from the Department's regional bureaus and are added to the database of the Department of State website you are now using.

Country Pages
Within each Background Note is a link under "OFFICIAL NAME" that goes to the respective "country page" containing additional information. For a specific country, click on the Background Note link below, or, for a list of the countries in a region of the world (with links to respective country pages) go to the Countries and Other Areas section in each of these regions: Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, Near East, South Asia, and the Western Hemisphere.