ok worked it out... if anyones interested, haproxy needed the options [i]forwardfor[/i] (to include X-Forwarder-For in header) and [i]httpclose[/i], then nginx needs to be configured/installed with --with-http_realip_module and in nginx.conf:
http { ...
set_real_ip_from haproxy.ip.address;
real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For;
... }
location ... { ...
fastcgi_param COUNTRY $geoip_country_name;
... }