United Nations geoscheme

AI-assisted Knowledge Update: This article was automatically consolidated to provide you with the most up-to-date data instantly.

--- CONTENT ---
The United Nations geoscheme is a system which divides 249 countries and territories in the world into six regional, 17 subregional, and nine intermediate regional groups. It was devised by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) based on the M49 coding classification. The creators note that "the assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories".

Usage
The schema was created for statistical analysis and consists of macro-geographical regions arranged to the extent possible according to continents. Within each region, smaller geographical sub-regions and sometimes intermediate regions contain countries. Countries are also grouped nongeographically into selected economic and other sets.

Antarctica is the only geographical region which does not comprise any sub-regions or country-level areas.

The UNSD geoscheme does not set a standard for the entire United Nations System, and it often differs from geographical definitions used by the autonomous United Nations specialized agencies for their own organizational convenience. For instance, the UNSD includes Cyprus and Georgia in Western Asia, yet the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and UNESCO include them in Europe. This "statistical" definition also differs from United Nations Regional Groups

Alternative groupings
Other alternative groupings include the World Bank regional classification, CIA World Factbook regions and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Geographic Regions.

Africa

Northern Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Eastern Africa
Middle Africa
Southern Africa
Western Africa

Americas

Latin America and the Caribbean
Caribbean†
Central America†
South America
Northern America†

† The Caribbean, Central America, and Northern America together form the geographical continent of North America.

Asia

Central Asia
Eastern Asia
South-eastern Asia
Southern Asia
Western Asia

Europe

Eastern Europe (including Northern Asia)
Northern Europe
Southern Europe
Western Europe

Oceania

Australia and New Zealand
Melanesia
Micronesia
Polynesia

Maps

See also
List of countries by the United Nations geoscheme
Regions of Europe
United Nations Regional Groups
United Nations Statistics Division

References

geoscheme