UN

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 M.49 is a standard for area codes used by the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 for statistical

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 purposes, developed and maintained by the United Nations Statistics Division. Each area code is a 3-digit number which can refer to a wide variety of geographical, political, or economic regions, like a continent

Continent

A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is...

, a country

Country

A country is a region legally identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with a previously...

, or a specific “group of developing countries”.

Some of these codes, those representing countries and territories, were first included as part of the ISO 3166-1

ISO 3166-1

ISO 3166-1 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , and defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names...

 standard in its second edition in 1981, but they have been released by the United Nations Statistics Division since as early as 1970.

Another part of these numeric codes, those representing geographical (continental and sub-continental) supranational regions, was also included in the IANA registry for region subtags (first described in September 2006 in the now obsoleted RFC 4646, but confirmed in its successor RFC 5646, published in September 2009) for use within language tags, as specified in IETF's BCP 47 standard track (where the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are used as region subtags, instead of UN M.49 codes, for countries and territories).

Code lists

M.49 area codes (as of 15 April 2009)

EWLINE Geographical supranational regions (See also BCP 47 where these were imported as region subtags) Code Area 001 World World World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth.... 002 Africa Africa Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area... 015 Northern Africa   Sub-Saharan Africa 014 Eastern Africa 017 Middle Africa 018 Southern Africa 011 Western Africa 019 Americas Americas The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily... 419 Latin America and the Caribbean 029 Caribbean 013 Central America 005 South America 021 Northern America 142 Asia Asia Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population... 143 Central Asia 030 Eastern Asia 034 Southern Asia 035 South-Eastern Asia 145 Western Asia 150 Europe Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting... 151 Eastern Europe 154 Northern Europe 830 Channel Islands 039 Southern Europe 155 Western Europe 009 Oceania Oceania Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago... 053 Australia and New Zealand 054 Melanesia 057 Micronesia 061 Polynesia

EWLINE Examples of geopolitical entities (countries or territories) (See also ISO 3166-1 numeric ISO 3166-1 numeric ISO 3166-1 numeric codes are three-digit country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...  for the complete set) Code Area 024 Angola Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city... 591 Panama Panama Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The... 496 Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest... 554 New Zealand New Zealand New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga... 756 Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... Examples of economic regions (defined for statistical use only) Code Area   Developed and developing regions   Developed regions 021 Northern America 150 Europe 392 Japan 053 Australia and New Zealand 376 Israel   Southern African Customs Union   Developing regions 002 Africa (sometimes excluding the Southern African Customs Union) 019* Americas (* excluding Northern America, numerical code 021) 029 Caribbean 013 Central America 005 South America 142* Asia (* excluding Japan, numerical code 392, and sometimes also Israel, numerical code 376) 009* Oceania (* excluding Australia and New Zealand, numerical code 053) 778 Transition countries 172 Commonwealth of Independent States   Transition countries of South-Eastern Europe   Developing countries 432 Landlocked Landlocked A landlocked country is a country entirely enclosed by land, or whose only coastlines lie on closed seas. There are 48 landlocked countries in the world, including partially recognized states...  developing countries 722 Small island developing states 199 Least developed countries

Private-use and reserved codes

Beside the lists standardized above, the numeric code 900 to 999 are reserved for private-use in ISO 3166-1 (under agreement by the UNSD) and in the UN M.49 standards. They may be used for any other groupings or subdivision of countries, territories and regions.

Some of these private-use codes are already found in some UN statistics reports and databases, for its own local purposes. They are not portable across databases from third-parties (except through private agreements, which may also define their own equivalences if their respective private codes are different but designating the same regions of interest), and may be changed without notice.

Note that the code 000 is specially reserved and not used for defining any region. It is used in absence of data, or for data in which no region (not even the World as a whole) is applicable. For unknown or unencoded regions, private-use codes should preferably be used.

Codes no longer in use (obsoleted since 1982)

Old Code	Old Area	New Code(s)
200	Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...	203, 703
720	Democratic Yemen	887
230	Ethiopia Ethiopia Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...	231
280	Federal Republic of Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...	276
278	German Democratic Republic German Democratic Republic The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...	276
532	Netherlands Antilles Netherlands Antilles The Netherlands Antilles , also referred to informally as the Dutch Antilles, was an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, consisting of two groups of islands in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao , in Leeward Antilles just off the Venezuelan coast; and Sint...	530, 533
582	Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was a United Nations trust territory in Micronesia administered by the United States from 1947 to 1986.-History:...	580, 583, 584, 585
891	Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro was a country in southeastern Europe, formed from two former republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia : Serbia and Montenegro. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, it was established in 1992 as a federation called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...	499, 688
890	Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...	070, 191, 705, 807, 891
062	South-Central Asia	034, 143
810	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	031, 051, 112, 233, 268, 398, 417, 428, 440, 498, 762, 795, 804, 860
886	Yemen Yemen The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....	887

External links

• Standard country or area codes and geographical regions for statistical use