Find the answer to the seemingly simple question:"How many countries in the world?" Is not at all easy. Leafing through the various directories, you can see different data. Even in official information, reported for one year, they may differ.
Try - Count
And the thing is that the state is not onlyappear and disappear. Some of them can change their status and belong to different groups, to be recognized by other countries or not. In some territories, the status remains uncertain: it is still not clear whether to consider them sovereign or not. And all the states agree on the same approach to determining their status and how many countries in the world have not yet succeeded due to the discrepancy of their political, economic and other interests.
The main group is represented by those statesthat are part of the United Nations and recognized by all. Taking into account those who joined this international organization at the beginning of the XXI century, they are already counted 193. Well, and how many states in the world are there, it’s really very difficult to count. For example, the Maltese Order, which cannot be called a state, however, has observer status with the UN and maintains diplomatic relations with many countries.
There is one well-known independentVatican State, which is not part of any world organization, including the UN. Sometimes the same country is called Kosovo. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Palestine and several other similar territories are recognized by others only partially. And the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh, is not considered sovereign by any UN member. On our planet there is a unique country Somaliland - it is generally not recognized by anyone, but, nevertheless, it exists.
Сорок девять территорий имеют свои флаги и claim to be called states. Moreover, many of them are located on the territory of other countries. Some of the formations have a special status recognized by the international community: Antarctica, Spitsbergen, Macau, Hong Kong and the Aland Islands. All this makes it difficult to count how many countries in the world there are at the moment.
Seven regions (four French, twoPortuguese and Hawaii), although they are an integral part of their states, but removed from them at great distances, and this does not allow them to be part of their country. In several state entities, the status is not defined, and the territory, called Sealand, does not have any status at all.
And this is not all the information.It is also difficult to understand how many countries are in the world today because the process of forming a political map of the world is continuous and very variable. States periodically appear and disappear, their number can be called approximately. It can only be firmly asserted that there are about 200 states on Earth that have received international recognition.
It is also difficult to determine how many cities in the world, and what can be called a city. There is evidence that nearly 2.5 million localities claim to have city status.
