Formally a part of the USSR, Belarus is now an independent country bordered by Poland, Lithuania, Russia and the Ukraine.  The country covers some 207,600 sq km and has a population of 10 million. Twenty percent of the population live in the capital, Minsk.

Belarus used to be a major supplier of food to the Soviet Union but now, with extensive areas of contamination from the Chernobyl disaster, it has difficulty selling even the un-contaminated food.  With the deprivation of such a large proportion of its income, the country has huge economic problems.

Minsk itself looks like any other proud capital, but under the surface you can see that it cannot support its previous grandeur. Out in the country the situation is even worse, most villages do not have running water and depend upon wells for their water, and even some of these are frozen during the long, hard, winters months.
 
In the 3 years following the Chernobyl disaster, 100,000 people, many simple farmers, were re-housed from the radiation hot spots, 55,000 ending up in high rise apartments, specially built for them in Minsk. It was essential to move people away from these contaminated areas, but no one foresaw the social implication of doing so. No jobs, no land - just despair.

According to the World Bank, almost a quarter of the population live below the poverty line.