UN M49 explained

UN M49 or the Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (Series M, No. 49) is a standard for area codes used by the United Nations for statistical 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 and political regions, like a continent and a country. Codes assigned in the system generally do not change when the country or area's name changes (unlike ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 or ISO 3166-1 alpha-3), but instead change when the territorial extent of the country or area changes significantly, although there have been exceptions to this rule.

Some of these codes, those representing countries and territories, were first included as part of the ISO 3166-1 standard in its second edition in 1981, but they have been released by the United Nations Statistics Division since 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 (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 December 2021)

Geographical supranational regions
(See also BCP 47 where these were imported as region subtags)

Code	Area				Subregions
001	World				249	002, 009, 010, 019, 142, 150
002		Africa			60	015, 202
015			Northern Africa		7	Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Egypt
202			Sub-Saharan Africa		53	011, 014, 017, 018
011				Western Africa	17	Cape Verde, Benin, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Burkina Faso
014				Eastern Africa	22	British Indian Ocean Territory, Burundi, Comoros, Mayotte, Ethiopia, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Djibouti, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Reunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Zimbabwe,, Uganda, Tanzania, United Republic of, Zambia
017				Middle Africa	9	Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe
018				Southern Africa	5	Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland
010		Antarctica			1
019		Americas			57	(021, 419) or (003, 005)
003			North America^[1]		41	013, 021, 029
021				Northern America	5	Bermuda, Canada, Greenland, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, United States
419			Latin America and the Caribbean		52	005, 013, 029
005				South America	16	Argentina, Bolivia, Plurination;al State of, Bouvet Island, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of
013				Central America	8	Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama
029				Caribbean	28	Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Virgin Islands, British, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat,, Aruba,,, Puerto Rico,, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, Saint Lucia,, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, U.S.
142		Asia			50	030, 034, 035, 143, 145
030			Eastern Asia		7	China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Democratic People's Republic of, Korea, Republic of, Macao, Mongolia
034			Southern Asia		9	Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, India, Iran, Islamic Republic of, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan
035			South-eastern Asia		11	Brunei Darussalam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Philippines, Timor-Leste, Singapore, Viet Nam, Thailand
143			Central Asia		5	Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
145			Western Asia		18	Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Palestinian Territory, Occupied, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
150		Europe			52	039, 151, 154, 155
039			Southern Europe		16	Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Gibraltar, Greece, Holy See (Vatican City State), Italy, Malta, Montenegro, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
151			Eastern Europe (including Northern Asia)		10	Bulgaria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Republic of, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Ukraine
154			Northern Europe		17	Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Aland Islands, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Sweden, United Kingdom,, 830
830					Channel Islands	3	,,
155			Western Europe		9	Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Switzerland
009		Oceania			29	053, 054, 057, 061
053			Australia and New Zealand		6	Australia, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, New Zealand, Norfolk Island
054			Melanesia		5	Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea
057			Micronesia		8	Kiribati, Guam, Nauru, Northern Mariana Islands, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Micronesia, Federated States of, Marshall Islands, Palau
061			Polynesia		10	American Samoa, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Niue, Pitcairn, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna, Samoa

Other groupings

Code	Area
432	Landlocked developing countries (LLDCs)
722	Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
199	Least developed countries (LDCs)

Examples of geopolitical entities (countries or territories)
(See also ISO 3166-1 numeric for the complete set)

Code	Area
024	Angola
591	Panama
496	Mongolia
554	New Zealand
756	Switzerland
830	Channel Islands

Private-use codes and reserved codes

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

Some of these private-use codes may be found in some UN statistics reports and databases, for their own specific purpose. They are not portable across databases from third parties (except through private agreement), and may be changed without notice.

Note that the code 000 is 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.For example, the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository uses 961 for its grouping Outlying Oceania.^[2]

Extensions to M.49

Early editions of M.49 used one- or two-digit prefixes to designate economic regions rather than assigning 3-digit codes. These two digit prefixes were designed to be used to easily aggregate data through the use of prefix matching, and regions could be specified collectively by using the 000 code as a base to which the prefix would be added. For example, by prefixing 13 to Algeria's code, 012, to create the five-digit code 13012, Algeria could be identified as being in North Africa (13000), which is itself in Africa (10000).

One-digit suffixes were also permitted, to specify statistics of subdivisions of countries. For example, by suffixing 5 to the code for the United Kingdom to create the four-digit code 8265, Scotland could be represented as a subdivision of the United Kingdom. Additional suffixes could be used to represent the other constituent units of the UK.

Developed and developing regions

The United Nations Statistics Division classifies economic regions into developed and developing regions for statistical convenience. Although this classification was removed from M49 in December 2021,^[3] it is still used by the UNSD and various United Nations reports.

Examples of economic regions
(defined for statistical use only)

Code	Area<	--	-		Developed and developing regions-->
	Developed regions
021		Northern America
150		Europe
392		Japan
410		Republic of Korea^[4] ^[5]
053		Australia and New Zealand
376		Israel
018		Southern Africa
	Developing regions
002		Africa (sometimes excluding Southern Africa)
419/019		Latin America and the Caribbean / Americas
029			Caribbean
013			Central America
005			South America
142*		Asia (* excluding Japan: 392, the Republic of Korea: 410, and sometimes also Israel: 376)
009*		Oceania (* excluding Australia and New Zealand: 053)
778	Transition countries
172		Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
		Transition countries of South-eastern Europe

Codes no longer in use (obsolete since 1982)

Old Code	Old Area	class=unsortable	New Code(s)
128	Canton and Enderbury Islands	296
200	Czechoslovakia	203, 703
720	Democratic Yemen	887
230	Ethiopia	231, 232
280	Federal Republic of Germany	276
274	Gaza Strip	275
278	German Democratic Republic	276
396	Johnston Island	581
488	Midway Islands	581
530	Netherlands Antilles	531, 534, 535
532	Netherlands Antilles	530, 533
582	Pacific Islands (Trust Territory)	580, 583, 584, 585
891	Serbia and Montenegro	499, 688
890	Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia	070, 191, 705, 807, 891
062	South-Central Asia	034, 143
736	Sudan	728, 729
810	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	031, 051, 112, 233, 268, 398, 417, 428, 440, 498, 762, 795, 804, 860
849	United States miscellaneous Pacific Islands	581
872	Wake Island	581
886	Yemen	887

See also

• Address geocoding
• ISO 3166-1 numeric
• United Nations geoscheme
• List of countries by United Nations geoscheme

External links

• Standard country or area codes for statistical use

Notes and References

1. Web site: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM . 2011-07-15 . 2012-04-17 . . Davis . Mark . https://web.archive.org/web/20111111080156id_/http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-subtags-templates/003 . 2011-11-11 . dead.
2. Web site: Davis . Mark . Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML) . unicode.org . 13 December 2023 . en . 2023-10-25.
3. Web site: Standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49) . June 7, 2022 . United Nations Statistics Division . There is no definition of developing and developed countries (or areas) within the UN system. However, in 1996 the distinction between “Developed regions” and “Developing regions” was introduced to the Standard country or area codes for statistical use (known as M49). These groupings were intended solely for statistical convenience at the time and did not express a judgement about any country’ or area’s stage of development. Over time the use of the distinction between "Developed regions" and "Developing regions", including in the flagship publications of the United Nations, has diminished. Since 2017, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) report and the statistical annex to the Secretary General’s annual report on SDGs progress uses only geographic regions without referring to the two groupings of developed and developing regions. Therefore, following consultation with other international and supranational organizations active in official statistics, the “Developed regions” and “Developing regions” were removed from the "Other groupings" of the M49 in December 2021..
4. Web site: Classification of developed and developing regions – historical and updated (.xlsx). 24 January 2023. unstats.un.org. en.
5. Web site: Trade and Development Report 2023. 8, 16, 20, 151 . United Nations Conference on Trade and Development . en.