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ISO 3166

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Term Definition
ISO 3166

An international standard that defines the code designations of States and dependent territories, as well as the main administrative entities within States.

It consists of the following parts:

  • ISO3166-1 - codes of states and dependent territories.
  • ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 is a two-letter system with many applications used by ICANN to assign national top-level domain names.
  • ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 is a three-letter system.
  • ISO 3166-1 numeric is a three-digit system identical to the statistical division used in the UN.
  • ISO 3166-2 - codes of administrative entities within states (regions, states, provinces, etc.).
  • ISO 3166-3 - codes of already non-existent states (unification, separation, name change, etc.).

249 countries and territories have their own codes. In accordance with the Standards AgencyISO 3166, the country or territory should be included in the UN bulletin. Country names or country and region codes for use in statistics of the UN Statistics Division. In order to be included in the ballot, a country or territory must meet any of the following conditions:

  • To be a member of the UN.
  • Be a member of any of the UN specialized agencies.
  • Take part in drafting the code of laws of the International Court of Justice of the United Nations.

When the name changes, the country or region gets a new code, and the numeric code changes when the borders change. Some codes are reserved for various purposes, for example, obsolete codes become reserved.

Synonyms:ISO_3166