ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical background and a description of major events in Iceland. It also provides basic political, economic, and social data arranged in the following categories: polity, economy, population, purchasing power parities, life expectancy, ethnic groups, capital, political rights, civil liberties, and status. The chapter discusses the progress and decline of political rights and civil liberties in Iceland. Icelanders can change their government democratically. Iceland handed over its citizens' genetic data to a private, US-backed, medical research company in 2000, raising some fears over privacy issues. Gender-based equality is guaranteed by law. In July, the United Nations ranked Iceland second in the world in terms of equal rights between the sexes. In 1995, women held 17 out of the 63 seats in parliament. That number rose to 22, or approximately 35 percent, after the 1999 elections. Virtually everyone in the country holds at least nominal membership in the state-supported Lutheran Church.
