Suriname is located on the northern coast of South America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean on the north, French Guiana on the east, Guyana on the west, and Brazil on the south. It occupies 163,270 square kilometers (63,039 square miles) is slightly larger than the U.S. state of Georgia, and is the smallest independent nation in South America. Its population was estimated to be 436,935 in July 2004. In 2003 its per capita income was estimated at $3,500, about the same as that of Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, or Ecuador.

Suriname is an ethnically and religiously diverse country: 37 percent of its people are of (East) Indian origin, 31 percent Creole (mixed black and white), 15 percent Javanese (Indonesian), and 10 percent descended from African slaves brought to the country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who escaped and took up residence in the interior of the territory. There are also small groups of American Indians, Chinese, whites, and...