Nations of the world
First posted 2 August 1996 at 2255 GMT
Last updated 16 May 2004 at 0042 GMT
SINGAPORE -- Today, there are 192 independent sovereign states in
the world. The world's newest state is Timor-Leste (with the
hyphen), which is the Portuguese form of its previous name, East Timor. On
20 May 2002, Timor-Leste gained its independence as the world's 192nd
independent sovereign state, and on 27 September 2002, Timor-Leste became the
191st and most recent of the member states
of the United Nations.
States, nations and countries
For practical purposes, the terms independent sovereign state,
state, nation, nation-state and country are used
synonymously. An independent state refers to a
people politically organized into a sovereign state within a definite
territory. A dependency and an areas of special
sovereignty refer to a broad category of political entities that
are associated in some way with an independent state.
Note: the word state is ambiguous in the United
States, where most people use it to refer to one of the individual
states of the United States. Historically, each of the
individual states of the United States held that it was an independent
sovereign state and a member of a "federal republic" and
federated with the other states.
An independent sovereign states exists by reason of its claim
of such status and the recognition of such status by all or most of the
world's other states. Again, there is no authority which confers
the status of independent sovereign statehood -- it is the result
of international relations.
Further information
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