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Background Notes
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. They're updated and 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. The PoliSource Archive contains Background Notes from several years ago for historical research, but a more complete source is now available on the DOS's Previous Editions of Background Notes page. The links under Latest Background Notes below point to the most recent available Background notes for the countries listed, but the DOS's version of this list gets updated to include new countries and exclude those no longer in existence.
Country Pages
Within each Background Note (in the DOS database only, not the Polisource archive) is a link under "OFFICIAL NAME" that goes to the respective "country page" for additional information. Conversely, clicking a region below will open a list of countries in the region that directly link to the "additional information" pages, which each provide a link to the corresponding Background Notes page.
Africa · East Asia and the Pacific · Europe and Eurasia · Near East · South Asia · Western Hemisphere