Background:

Although originally a Christian nation, in the 14^th and 15^th centuries Albania was overpowered, like the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, by the expanding Ottoman Empire, which converted approximately 70 percent of the Albanian population to Islam, turning it into the only Muslim state in Europe. From 1944 to 1991, Albania, along with other countries of Eastern Europe, became communist, and the most hermetically closed regime of all.

As the rest of Eastern Europe threw off the yoke of communism in the early 1990s, Albania too welcomed the new freedoms, but true democracy and economic prosperity continues to elude it. In the countryside, where more than half of Albania’s population lives, poverty is even more widespread than in Tirana and other urban areas. Many villages have no electricity or running water.

• Capital:
• Tirana

• Population:
• 3,620 million(as of July 2008)
• 23.6% are children 0-14 years
• 25% living below poverty line (2004 estimate)

• Religion:
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• Muslim 70%
• Albanian Orthodox 20%
• Roman Catholic 10%

• Location:
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• Southeastern Europe, bordering the Adriatic Sea and Ionian Sea, between Greece in the south and Montenegro and Kosovo to the north.

• Government:
• Emerging democracy

• Languages:
• Albanian
• Greek
• Vlach
• Romani
• Slavic dialects

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