Suriname

Suriname is a small country on the northern coast of South America, between Guyana, French Guiana and Brazil, facing the Atlantic. Rainforest covers more than 90% of its land, and Paramaribo is the capital and largest city. Dutch is the official language, used in government, business, schools and the press, while the English-based creole Sranan Tongo links its many communities.

The Lokono, Kalina, Wayana and other Indigenous peoples lived here from the fourth millennium BC, and the name may come from a people called the Surinen. English settlers founded plantations in the 17th century, but at the Treaty of Breda in 1667 the Dutch kept the colony and left New Amsterdam, later New York, to England. Sugar plantations lined the rivers, and Maroon communities in the forest signed treaties with the colony in the 18th century. From the late 19th century workers came from British India and the Dutch East Indies, which is why Hindus and Muslims form large parts of the population.

Suriname became a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954 and independent on 25 November 1975. The present constitution dates from 1987. It is a republic whose president is chosen by the National Assembly for five years.

Bauxite mining was the main source of income from before independence until Alcoa stopped its operations in 2015. The state oil company Staatsolie extracts and refines oil, gold is mined in the interior, and rice, bananas, shrimp and timber are exported. The Central Suriname Nature Reserve, set up in 1998, became a World Heritage Site in 2000, and the historic inner city of Paramaribo, with its Dutch colonial buildings, followed in 2002. Footballers born in Suriname or of Surinamese descent, among them Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Clarence Seedorf, played for the Dutch national team.