Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country situated in northern East Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea.
Eritrea was conquered by Italy and formally consolidated into a colony by the Italian government on January 1, 1890. Upon Italy's losses in World War II, Eritrea was ruled as a United Nations protectorate between 1941 and 1952 administered by the British; the UN flag flew over all official buildings.
On December 2, 1950 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 390 A (V) to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia. From September 1951 to November 1962, Eritrea was an autonomous territory federated with Ethiopia.
Increasing unrest and resistance in Eritrea against the federation with Ethiopia eventually led to a decision by the Ethiopian government to annex Eritrea as its 14th province in 1962. An Eritrean independence movement formed in the early 1960s which later erupted into a 31 year long civil war against successive Ethiopian governments that ended in 1991. Following a UN supervised referendum in Eritrea dubbed UNOVER in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence from Ethiopia, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993. Eritrea's constitution, adopted in 1997, stipulates that the state is a presidential republic with a unicameral parliamentary democracy. The constitution, however, has not yet been implemented fully due to, according to the government, the prevailing border conflict with Ethiopia which began in May 1998.
Eritrea is a multilingual and multicultural country with two dominant religions (Coptic Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam) and nine ethnic groups. The country has no official languages but the government makes use of two "working languages" Tigrinya and Arabic in all its official communication, in addition to the other languages used in more specific contexts. English is also used in all of the government's international communication and is the language of instruction in all education beyond 5th grade. Italian is also spoken by some people of the older generations who lived and acquired this language during the colonial era. N/A | 
