General country information

• The Library of Congress – Portals to the World makes an excellent starting point. Their Country Studies page contains many links to a variety of topics for each country and they do more in-depth Country Profiles for a selection of countries.
• One World's Nations Online contains links to many useful websites for each country.
• Infoplease provides basic data for countries around the world.
• The CIA World Factbook includes general background and statistics on the geography, people, economy, communications, transportation, military and transnational issues for all of the world's countries.
• Many countries provide country profiles on their governmental Foreign Affairs sites. Three examples are the United States (Background Notes), the United Kingdom (Country Profiles) and Canada (Country Insights, with topical links).
• Online directories have geographical links listings and are a quick way to identify a wide range of sites - see Google Regional or Yahoo Countries.
  
• Online encyclopedias can provide good general country background, for example: Wikipedia.
• Newspapers are excellent sources of local information. To view newspapers from different countries try Online Newspapers or Newspapers.com.
  

International statistical data

• The UNSD Statistical Databases page on the UN Statistics Division website gives access to UN country data for a variety of topics, and to links to national statistical offices of member countries.
• The Human Rights Development Reports from the United Nations Development Programme include human development indicator tables that give a global assessment of country achievements in different areas of human development, such as sanitation, health, education, income, etc.
• The World Resources Institute EarthTrends Country Profiles contain environmental statistics over a range of ecosystem and resource areas.

Country information on human rights issues

• Human Rights Watch produces global overviews and news updates by country.
• The Amnesty International Library has regular reports and news for most countries.

• The World Travel Guide has guides to countries, airports, attractions, etc.
• To access national tourist offices, go to the Tourism Offices Worldwide Directory.
• For information on embassies and consulates, visit the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade site or Embassy World.
• Governmental travel advisory services issue travel warnings and cautions on security and risks in countries worldwide. It can be worthwhile looking at more than one of these sites as opinions do vary. Here are the links for the Australian, the United Kingdom and the United States government sites.
  
• Travel guides can be good sources for local information. Three of the main guide publishers are Frommers, Rough Guides and Lonely Planet