Peace Treaty that would bring the now divided ethnic
Setu people and parts of the Narva region within Estonia; the
Latvian-Russian boundary treaty of 1997 remains unsigned and
unratified with Russia linking it to better Latvian treatment of
ethnic Russians and Latvian politicians demanding Russian agreement
to a declaration that admits Soviet aggression during the Second
World War and other issues; in 2003, the Lithuania-Russia land and
maritime boundary treaty was ratified and a transit regime
established through Lithuania linking Russia and its Kaliningrad
coastal exclave, leaving only improvements to the border demarcation
in 2005; delimitation of land boundary with Ukraine is complete, but
states have agreed to defer demarcation; Russia and Ukraine continue
talks but still dispute the alignment of a maritime boundary through
the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov; Kazakhstan and Russia continue
demarcation of their long border; Russian Duma has not yet ratified
1990 Maritime Boundary Agreement with the US in the Bering Sea

Refugees and internally displaced persons:
IDPs: 368,000 (displacement from Chechnya and North Ossetia) (2004)

Illicit drugs:
limited cultivation of illicit cannabis and opium poppy and
producer of methamphetamine, mostly for domestic consumption;
government has active illicit crop eradication program; used as
transshipment point for Asian opiates, cannabis, and Latin American
cocaine bound for growing domestic markets, to a lesser extent
Western and Central Europe, and occasionally to the US; major source
of heroin precursor chemicals; corruption and organized crime are
key concerns; heroin increasingly popular in domestic market

This page was last updated on 20 October, 2005

======================================================================

@Rwanda

Introduction Rwanda

Background:
In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority
ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the
next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some
150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of
these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front
(RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several
political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions,
culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis