East Timor holds a run-off vote Monday in its second presidential election as a free country. In May, East Timor will celebrate 10 years of independence from Indonesia.
Here are the key facts about the fledgling nation, officially known as Timor-Leste:
POPULATION: 1.1 million
GEOGRAPHY: East Timor is a half-island nation, covering 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 square miles) in Southeast Asia, northwest of Australia and at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago.
CAPITAL: Dili
ECONOMY: Its annual gross domestic product was about $700 million in 2010, with GDP per capita at $2,220.
East Timor is one of the world's poorest nations and is heavily dependent on its oil and gas reserves.
LANGUAGE: Tetum, Portuguese
RELIGION: Catholic (95 percent), along with small numbers of Muslims and Protestants
HISTORY: Portugal colonised the territory around 1515 and held onto it for more than 400 years before Japan invaded in 1942 during World War II.
Up to 60,000 people died in the Japanese occupation, which ended in 1945 after Japan was defeated in the war, returning power to Portugal.
East Timor declared independence from Portugal in 1975, but its sovereignty was short-lived -- Indonesian troops launched an invasion just nine days later.
Indonesia's 24-year bloody occupation claimed up to 183,000 lives through genocide, starvation or disease.
East Timor's resistance leader Xanana Gusmao was captured by Indonesian forces in 1992.
The outgoing president Jose Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Belo won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor.
In 1999, 78.5 percent of Timorese voted for independence in a bloody referendum that left 1,400 dead and much of the territory's infrastructure destroyed.
The atrocities prompted an Australian-led multinational force to move in and restore order, while the UN established a body to administer the country.
Gusmao was freed around the same time in late 1999 and went on to win the first presidential election in April 2002, ahead of formal independence.
East Timor declared independence on May 20, 2002.
Violence rocked the country in 2006, ahead of elections the following year, killing 37 people and displacing 150,000.
Ramos-Horta was sworn in as prime minister in 2006 in the wake of the violence and went on to win the presidency in 2007.
Ramos-Horta was shot and wounded by rebels on February 11, 2008, and was airlifted to hospital in Australia.
The UN handed security responsibilities back to the East Timor police in 2011 and plans to withdraw from the country by the year-end, seeing through the presidential election and the legislative elections in July.
