United States Minor Outlying Islands/OER

by Paul Bacsich, originally for Re.ViCa - edited for POERUP

(sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Minor_Outlying_Islands)

The United States Minor Outlying Islands - sometimes called the US Minor Outlying Islands, is a "meta-country" like Svalbard and Jan Mayen - in other words it is a statistical designation defined by the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 3166-1 code.

It consists of nine United States insular areas in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea:

1. Wikipedia:Baker Island
2. Wikipedia:Howland Island
3. Wikipedia:Jarvis Island
4. Wikipedia:Johnston Atoll
5. Wikipedia:Kingman Reef
6. Wikipedia:Midway Atoll
7. Wikipedia:Navassa Island
8. Wikipedia:Palmyra Atoll
9. Wikipedia:Wake Island

Among them, Palmyra Atoll is the only "incorporated territory".

The United States also claims that the Caribbean territories of Bajo Nuevo Bank and Serranilla Bank should also be included but their status is disputed so that we ignore these specks of land.

As of 2008, none of the islands has any permanent residents. The only human population consists of temporarily stationed scientific and military personnel. The 2000 census counted 316: 315 people on Johnston Atoll and 1 person on Wake Island. There has been no modern indigenous population, except at the 1940 census. A 2009 estimate suggests 300.

The capital is best regarded as Wake Island, even though the administrative centre is in the US, at Washington, DC.

The Baker, Howland and Jarvis Colonization Scheme attempted to settle Americans on those three islands beginning in 1935, but all three islands were evacuated in 1942 as a result of World War II.

The islands are grouped together as a statistical convenience. They are not administered collectively, nor do they share a single cultural or political history beyond being uninhabited islands under the sovereignty of the United States.

They are collectively represented by the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code UM. The individual islands have ISO 3166-2 numerical codes, see ISO 3166-2:UM. The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) ".um" has historically been assigned to the islands; however, the .um ccTLD was retired in January 2007.

The ISO introduced the term "United States Minor Outlying Islands" in 1986. From 1974 until 1986, five of the islands (Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll and Kingman Reef) were grouped under the term United States Miscellaneous Pacific Islands, with ISO 3166 code PU. The code of Midway Atoll was MI, the code of Johnston Atoll was JT, and the code of Wake Island was WK.

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