Independence Year :
Population : 2000
Life Expectancy : 0.0
Capital : 2805
GNP : 0.00
GNP Old : 0.00
Local Name : Niue
Government Form : Nonmetropolitan Territory of New Zealand
Location : Oceania, island in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Tonga
Terrain : steep limestone cliffs along coast, central plateau
Climate : tropical; modified by southeast trade winds
Ethnic Group : Niuen 78.2%, Pacific islander 10.2%, European 4.5%, mixed 3.9%, Asian 0.2%, unspecified 3% (2001 census)
Religions : Ekalesia Niue (Niuean Church - a Protestant church closely related to the London Missionary Society) 61.1%, Latter-Day Saints 8.8%, Roman Catholic 7.2%, Jehovah's Witnesses 2.4%, Seventh-Day Adventist 1.4%, other 8.4%, unspecified 8.7%, none 1.9%
Official Website :
www.gov.nu
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General Information - Niue
Background
Niue is perhaps the only nation-island located on a large rock of coral limestone with no other kind of rock protruding through its surface. It has no natural mining resources such as oil, gold, coal or even guano (bird droppings). Its soils are unwilling, its coasts unkind with precious little access to the bounties of the sea, which are also very few. It is a poor man's place. Although it has a clement climate and good rainfall, it also experiences annual periods of drought and the occasional disastrous year-long drought. Seabirds tend to agree, as borne out by the absence of deposits of bird droppings. The Niuean people agree too, since they have been leaving the island as soon as this became possible through modern shipping (since 1860). Now about 20,000 Niueans live elsewhere, leaving 1100 as caretakers behind (2004).
Yet, people who found Niue and wrestled a living from it, never wanted to return to where they came from. To them, Niue held promises, only to be fulfilled by hard work. Niue has perhaps never been a unity but it consisted of moieties (parts) with rivalry and war between them. But the island was too poor to be able to afford a king with ceremonies and a bureaucracy. Neither could Niue afford extensive spiritual rituals, large temples and priesthoods, even though Niueans were very superstitious. So the rank and file in Niue has by and large been unitarist, as in a republic.
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