For more information see the Yemen profile.

Yemen is located in the Middle East on the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The topography varies from hot coastal plains to cool mountains, and scorching deserts. Yemen's economy is agricultural and pastoral with increasing export of oil.

Until 1990, the widely differing North and South were separate nations. Unification brought ideological and even military clashes between the more fundamentalist North and more liberal South.

Islam is the state religion, yet the North and South disagree as to the status of religious freedom, with the North favoring Islamic fundamentalism and the South wanting a more moderate stance. Yemen is one of the least reached countries in the world, as Christians are less than one tenth of one percent of the population.