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,[1] although there have been exceptions to this rule.[a]

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.[4]

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)
CodeAreaSubregions
001World249002, 009, 010, 019, 142, 150
002Africa60015, 202
015Northern Africa7  012,  434,  504,  729,  732,  788,  818
202Sub-Saharan Africa53011, 014, 017, 018
011Western Africa17  132,  204,  270,  288,  324,  384,  430,  466,  478,  562,  566,  624,  654,  686,  694,  768,  854
014Eastern Africa22  086,  108,  174,  175,  231,  232,  260,  262,  404,  450,  454,  480,  508,  638,  646,  690,  706,  716,  728,  800,  834,  894
017Middle Africa9  024,  120,  140,  148,  178,  180,  226,  266,  678
018Southern Africa5  072,  426,  516,  710,  748
010Antarctica1  010
019Americas57(021, 419) or (003, 005)
003North America[5]41013, 021, 029
021Northern America5  060,  124,  304,  666,  840
419Latin America and the Caribbean52005, 013, 029
005South America16  032,  068,  074,  076,  152,  170,  218,  238,  239,  254,  328,  600,  604,  740,  858,  862
013Central America8  084,  188,  222,  320,  340,  484,  558,  591
029Caribbean28  028,  044,  052,  092,  136,  192,  212,  214,  308,  312,  332,  388,  474,  500,  531,  533,  534,  535,  630,  652,  659,  660,  662,  663,  670,  780,  796,  850
142Asia50030, 034, 035, 143, 145
030Eastern Asia7  156,  344,  392,  408,  410,  446,  496
034Southern Asia9  004,  050,  064,  144,  356,  364,  462,    524,  586
035South-eastern Asia11  096,  104,  116,  360,  418,  458,  608,  626,  702,  704,  764
143Central Asia5  398,  417,  762,  795,  860
145Western Asia18  031,  051,  048,  196,  268,  275,  368,  376,  400,  414,  422,  512,  634,  682,  760,  792,  784,  887
150Europe52039, 151, 154, 155
039Southern Europe16  008,  020,  070,  191,  292,  300,  336,  380,  470,  499,  620,  674,  688,  705,  724,  807
151Eastern Europe (including Northern Asia)10  100,  112,  203,  348,  498,  616,  642,  643,  703,  804
154Northern Europe17  208,  233,  234,  246,  248,  352,  372,  428,  440,  578,  744,  752,  826,  833, 830
830Channel Islands3  831,  832,  680
155Western Europe9  040,  056,  250,  276,  438,  442,  492,  528,   756
009Oceania29053, 054, 057, 061
053Australia and New Zealand6  036,  162,  166,  334,  554,  574
054Melanesia5  090,  242,  540,  548,  598
057Micronesia8  296,  316,  520,  580,  581,  583,  584,  585
061Polynesia10  016,  184,  258,  570,  612,  772,  776,  798,  876,  882
Other groupings
CodeArea
432Landlocked developing countries (LLDCs)
722Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
199Least developed countries (LDCs)
Examples of geopolitical entities (countries or territories)
(See also ISO 3166-1 numeric for the complete set)
CodeArea
024Angola
591Panama
496Mongolia
554New Zealand
756Switzerland
830Channel Islands[b]

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.[6]

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.[7] 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.[7] 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,[8] it is still used by the UNSD and various United Nations reports.

Examples of economic regions
(defined for statistical use only)
CodeArea
 Developed regions
021Northern America
150Europe[c]
392Japan
410Republic of Korea[9][10]
053Australia and New Zealand
376Israel[d]
018Southern Africa[d]
 Developing regions[e]
002Africa (sometimes excluding Southern Africa)[d]
419/019Latin America and the Caribbean / Americas[f]
029Caribbean
013Central America
005South America
142*Asia (* excluding Japan: 392, the Republic of Korea: 410, and sometimes also Israel: 376)[d]
009*Oceania (* excluding Australia and New Zealand: 053)
778Transition countries[g]
172Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
 Transition countries of South-eastern Europe[h]

Codes no longer in use (obsolete since 1982)

Old CodeOld AreaNew Code(s)
128Canton and Enderbury Islands[i]296
200Czechoslovakia[j]203, 703
720Democratic Yemen[k]887
230Ethiopia231, 232
280Federal Republic of Germany[l]276
274Gaza Strip275
278German Democratic Republic[l]276
396Johnston Island[m]581
488Midway Islands[m]581
530Netherlands Antilles[n]531, 534, 535
532Netherlands Antilles[o]530, 533
582Pacific Islands (Trust Territory)[p]580, 583, 584, 585
891Serbia and Montenegro[q]499, 688
890Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia[r]070, 191, 705, 807, 891[q]
062South-Central Asia034, 143
736Sudan[s]728, 729
810Union of Soviet Socialist Republics[t]031, 051, 112, 233, 268, 398, 417, 428, 440, 498, 762, 795, 804, 860
849United States miscellaneous Pacific Islands[m]581
872Wake Island[m]581
886Yemen[k]887

See also

Notes

Citations

References

  • Jensen, O.M.; Parkin, D.M.; MacLennan, R.; Muir, C.S.; Skeet, R.G., eds. (1991), "Appendix 1. United Nations Standard Country Codes" (PDF), Cancer Registration: Principles and Methods, IARC Scientific Publication, no. 95, International Agency for Research on Cancer, pp. 208–211, retrieved February 17, 2012
  • United Nations, Statistics Division (January 1970), United Nations Standard Country Code (PDF), Series M: Miscellaneous Statistical Papers, New York: United Nations, ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/49
  • United Nations, Statistical Office (August 1975), United Nations Standard Area or Country Code for Statistical Use (Rev. 1), Series M: Miscellaneous Statistical Papers, New York: United Nations, ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/49/Rev.1
  • United Nations, Statistics Office (June 1982), Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (Rev. 2), Series M: Miscellaneous Statistical Papers, New York: United Nations, ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/49/Rev.2
  • United Nations, Statistics Division (1996), Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (Rev. 3), Series M: Miscellaneous Statistical Papers, New York: United Nations, ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/49/Rev.3

External links