National integrity systems : TI country study report : Nauru

Nauru is a single Island state with a land area of 21 Km square and a population of approximately 11,300. It is one of the world's smallest Republics and was Nauru part of the German territories from 1886 to 1914. It was then mandated by the League of Nations to Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom. Nauru was administered by these three powers through the Trusteeship system of the United Nations after 1945 until it was granted full independence on the 31 January 1968. Nauru was one of the richest nations in the world on a per capita basis, when its export of phosphate rock, the sole and only export, was at its peak. Trouble for its fragile economy began when world price of phosphate began to fall in about 1988. The economic decline sharpened in the late 1980s and early 1990s but Nauru failed