How many independent countries are there in the world

These, along with the partially-recognized countries, are often called "de facto" sovereign states - a fancy Latin way of saying they're independent countries in actual fact , even if not on paper. Meanwhile, tiny " micronations " declared by individual people usually aren't taken seriously enough to put on the list. The closest contenders would probably be Sealand or the Kingdom of Papaala , but it's debatable whether those tiny "nations" really count as having a territory, population, or government like a real country is supposed to.

There are also many rebel-held territories and fully self-governing areas like Puntland state in Somalia that aren't controlled by any country, but are left off the list because they don't claim to be independent.

Their leaders agree in principle that they're part of another country, even if they disagree about who should be in charge or how the country should be governed. See all PolGeoNow maps and news articles about completely or partially-unrecognized countries.

Some semi-independent "countries" like the Cook Islands associated with New Zealand and Aruba a "constituent country" of the Netherlands are included too. As for the two partially-recognized countries in the games, Kosovo became an Olympic Nation in , and Taiwan has been a member for some time, but has to call itself "Chinese Taipei" after a deal struck with China in the s. This article, originally from , has been revised and updated to February You can view some older versions of the article in our archives.

A world political map published by the US government. One of the most basic questions for map-lovers is, "How many countries are there in the world? It actually depends a lot on how you define a "country".

Here are six of the most common answers, each correct in its own way: Sovereign States According to the UN "Country" and "nation" are casual words for what political scientists call a "sovereign state", meaning a place with its own borders and completely independent government. The question of which places count as sovereign states can be controversial, but for starters we normally count all the member and observer countries of the United Nations UN : UN Members: UN Observer States: 2 Total: These countries mostly all accept each other as sovereign states, and they're the ones you'll see on most world maps and lists of the world's countries.

If you want to know the names of all , Wikipedia has a complete list. The last addition to the list was in , when Palestine became a UN Observer State , and the last time the number of full UN members changed was when South Sudan joined in If you fancy taking a quiz, here's a good quick one. It is interesting to think that on the eve of the First World War, imperialism had reduced the number of independent countries in the world to just The advent of decolonisation was the leading cause to the dramatic increase in this number.

In the number of independent countries was In , And today , with the biggest increases coming in the s mainly in Africa where 25 new states were formed in alone and in in Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union fell apart. Today many of the new countries are tiny. No fewer than 36 have less than , inhabitants and many are formed as a result of civil war or multi-ethic policy, which is the most common form of conflict since the Second World War.

Some may be interested in the travellers' century club , an American based travel club which does count the likes of Wales, Bermuda and Antarctica in-fact they count that last one seven times! Their rules established in define separate destinations as being 'countries'.

A 'go to' travel guide for travellers by travellers. Toggle navigation. TL;DR Is traveling alone okay? Home How many countries are there? How many countries are there? Here's the most commonly cited official list for anyone interested in counting:. Perhaps the most puzzling non-country is Greenland , a massive island between the north Atlantic and Arctic oceans, which certainly looks like it ought to be its own country—just like its tiny neighbor, Iceland.

However, Greenland is not a U. Other sources use a less rigid definition of country and give dependent and disputed territories such as Greenland and the Gaza Strip their own separate listings. All of this demonstrates that it is not so simple to determine the exact number of countries there are in the world. Moreover, and the constantly changing nature of politics means that issues around sovereignty are unlikely to ever be fully resolved. For the ultimate list of not just countries, but also territories and regions that have some degree of self-governance but are not universally considered fully-fledged countries, check the table below.