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| 2019 map showing
countries with full recognition and some UN
non-member states; some disputed territories are
not shown. |
Countries
As defined by Montevideo Convention, a country is a
territory with distinct political boundaries that claims
sovereignty over a specific geographic area with a
permanent population, controlled by its own government
that enters relations with other states. There is no
universally accepted answer as to how many countries in
the world there actually are, however the minimum answer
is 193 for the 193 United Nations members.
This number can become bigger in other ways. For
example, there are two United Nations observer states.
The Vatican City State and the State of Palestine. This
would add two to the list of United Nations member
states, there for the number of countries the would be
195.
Taiwan is also sometimes classified as a country.
However, there is an ongoing disputes over Taiwan's
sovereignty with the People's Republic of China.
This can be developed on even further by adding the
constituent countries of the United Kingdom, The Kingdom
of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Denmark which
could add anywhere from three to eleven countries to the
prior number. |
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There are a number of disputed areas that have declared
independence from their parent state and receive limited
recognition. For example, Kosovo, South Ossetia,
Transnistria and Abkhazia. These are just some of the
many examples of terrirories with limited to no
recognition that are sometimes classed as countries.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the above
examples and quite often any one of these territories
may be counted as countries purely based on opinion. If
all of the above were added the list of U.N members
there could be anything up to 211 countries based on the
previous examples given.
There are however many more territories with unique
political circumstances that could also be counted.
Depending on how loosely the dictionary definition for
the word country is used there could be anything from
193 countries in the world or more. The matter is purely
subjective depending on varying opinions and there has
never been any consideration as to what the maximum
number of countries in the world could be.
There are multiple organisations that have their own
lists of countries, one example being the Travellers
Century Club which recognises 327 countries as of
01/01/18. |
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Constituent country
Constituent country is a term sometimes used, usually by
official institutions, in contexts in which a number of
countries compose a long entity or grouping. The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) has used the term referring to the former
Yugoslavia, and the European institutions like the
Council of Europe often use it in reference to the
European Union. |
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Territorial dispute
A disputed territory is that territory whose sovereignty
is jealously desired by two or more countries. Usually
the administration of the territory is carried out by
one of the countries that claims sovereignty, while the
other country does not recognize the sovereignty over
the territory of the other country. This does not
usually happen in land or sea areas on which none
possesses effective control, such as Antarctica, or only
partially. It can also be considered as a disputed
territory to those areas that are given by two different
governments, and therefore are divided. One example is
the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Cyprus. |
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