What is the smallest country in the world?

It is the Vatican, seat of the Catholic Church and official residence of the Pope. With just 0.44 square kilometers nestled in the heart of Rome, Italy, the smallest nation in the world became independent in 1929. Despite having its sovereignty recognized by most nations on the planet, the Vatican is not considered an autonomous country by the Organization of the United Nations, the UN. “Officially, the country is a theocracy, that is, governed by God and represented by the pope. The UN does not accept theocracy as a regime,” says writer Luiz Gintner, who studies countries with less than a thousand square kilometers.

In addition to the Vatican, there are other dwarf nations that managed to get rid of their countries of origin, such as the Marshall Islands, which became independent from the United States in 1986. “In theory, anyone can take possession of a piece of land that does not belong to them. anyone and proclaim it a country”, says Luiz. In practice, however, it is not so easy.

First, that territory must be in international waters, where no one governs. Then, a place that wants to become a nation needs to have a series of characteristics to deserve independence: people, territory, flag, seal, anthem, laws, defense system and, in some cases, its own language and currency. If all this is accomplished, the crazy idea might even make some sense. At least that’s how retired Major Roy Bates thought. Alongside his wife and children, the Englishman took possession of an abandoned maritime base in the North Sea, close to Great Britain, created a constitution, composed a hymn and declared the independence of the place in 1967, naming it the Principality of Sealand. Despite the insistence of popular folklore, no country in the world recognizes the sovereignty of its metallic platform.

The ten biggest midgets

1 – VATICAN (0.44 KM2)

Considered a religious enclave in Rome, capital of Italy, the smallest country in the world has about 900 inhabitants, all members of the Church or employees of the clergy. The city has its own telephone system, post office, radio station, banking system, pharmacies and a battalion of Swiss Guards who have looked after the pope’s security since 1506. In return, supplies such as water, food, electricity and gas have to be imported from Italy. In order to maintain itself, the Vatican depends on donations from the faithful and income from tourism – the place is one of the most visited spots in Europe.

2 – MONACO (1.9 KM2)

The principality occupies a narrow strip on the southern coast of France and has disputed borders. Some of the mansions in the area have a living room in Monaco and a bedroom in France. Of its 30,000 inhabitants, only 5,000 were born there — the rest are French, Italian and English, attracted by the glamor of this famous tourist complex.

3 – NAURU (21 KM2)

This tiny island in the South Pacific survives on the export of guano, a calcium phosphate made from the solidified poop of prehistoric birds that used the island as a toilet thousands of years ago. A good part of the mineral, which covers about 70% of the island, is exchanged for imported water, because the country does not have any rivers or natural springs.

4 – TUVALU (26 KM2)

An archipelago in the South Pacific that could disappear because of rising sea levels, Tuvalu has poor soils for agriculture. To make matters worse, rising ocean levels also contaminate drinking water and harm coconut plantations, the main source of income for the 11,000 inhabitants, aggravating their dependence on imported food.

5 – SAN MARINO (61 KM2)

According to tradition, this nation, located on a limestone peak in central Italy, was born in the 4th century, when a group of Christians settled there to escape Roman persecution. Beginning in 1862, after the formation of Italy’s current borders, a series of treaties confirmed the nation’s independence.

6 – LIECHTENSTEIN (160 KM2)

The sovereign of the nation, Prince Hans-Adam II, appears in the famous list of the American magazine Forbes as the third richest ruler. Squeezed into a territory with few natural resources, Liechtenstein is the champion of ecology: all forests are environmental protection areas and there is no heavy industry there.

7 – MARSHALL ISLANDS (181 KM2)

The archipelago gained fame from 1946, when the atolls of Bikini and Enewetak were the stage for American nuclear tests for 12 years. In 1983, 23 years after decontamination began, the United States agreed to pay compensation to the inhabitants of the place as compensation for the damage caused by the explosions.

8 – SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS (269 KM2)

The two small islands of volcanic origin were visited by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to America, in 1493. A large portion of the population emigrates to other countries in search of employment, making the remittance of wages obtained abroad one of the main income sources of the archipelago.

9 – MALDIVES (298 KM2)

Made up of more than 1,300 coral islands, the Maldives is one of the poorest — and strangest — countries in the world. Just to give you an idea, the residents are world champions of divorces. There, it is only necessary to repeat three times the intention to separate for the divorce to be consummated without appeal.

10 – MALTA (316 KM2)

As the Maltese are one of the oldest Catholic peoples in the world, life on the archipelago is heavily influenced by religion: there are 365 churches on the islands, one for each day of the year. Maltese, the country’s official language, is a fusion between the Arabic spoken in North Africa and the Italian of Sicily, from which the island is only 96 kilometers away.

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