Welcome to Nauru!
Nauru (Nauruan: Naoero) is a small island in the South Pacific Ocean south of the Marshall Islands and is the world's third-smallest country, only Monaco and the Vatican City are smaller. An off-the-beaten-track destination if there ever was one, Nauru is also one of the least visited countries in the world, with about only 200 tourists a year. The remoteness and that much of the island is a charmless open phosphate mine are two strong reasons for this.
Nauru (Nauruan: Naoero), officially the Republic of Nauru (Nauruan: Repubrikin Naoero) and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country and microstate in Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 km (190 mi) to the east. It further lies northwest of Tuvalu, 1,300 km (810 mi) northeast of the Solomon Islands, east-northeast of Papua New Guinea, southeast of the Federated States of Micronesia and south of the Marshall Islands. With only a 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi) area, Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world behind Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest republic as well as the smallest island nation. Its population of about 10,000 is the world's second-smallest, after Vatican City.
Settled by people from Micronesia and Polynesia circa 1000 BCE, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops, and was bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968, and became a member of the Pacific Community (SPC) in 1969.
Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations. Its remaining phosphate resources are not economically viable for extraction. Since the phosphate reserves were exhausted in the 1990s, and the island's environment has been seriously harmed by mining, the trust established to manage the island's wealth has diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre. From 2001 to 2008, and again from 2012, it accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, a controversial offshore Australian immigration detention facility. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, some sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia. The sovereign state is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States.