UN GeoRegion Codes
The United Nations Statistics Division provides recognized names and codings for the World's countries, areas and regions that have many research applications. A text version of this classification scheme is provided in UN-GeoRegions.txt. For users' convenience these names and codings have been organised into two text files: UN-GeoRegionCodes.txt and UN-GeoMaMiCodes.txt.
UN Recognised Countries
The United Nations recognizes 237 countries (or did when this data was retrieved in 2007), ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. A complete list is available in UN-GeoRegionCodes.txt.
UN Minor GeoRegions
The United Nations aggregates countries into 22 (Minor) GeoRegions, based largely on world geography. The UN Minor GeoRegions are:
- Australia and New Zealand
- Caribbean
- Central America
- Central Asia
- Eastern Africa
- Eastern Asia
- Eastern Europe
- Melanesia
- Micronesia
- Middle Africa
- Northern Africa
- Northern America
- Northern Europe
- Polynesia
- South America
- South-Eastern Asia
- Southern Africa
- Southern Asia
- Southern Europe
- Western Africa
- Western Asia
- Western Europe
UN Major GeoRegions
The UN Major GeoRegions are the five major continents:
- Africa
- Americas
- Asia
- Europe
- Oceania
This fits well with the six content version (excluding Antartica) of the standard continent definitions, with Australasia being named Oceania.
