international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...

three categories of Political status are usually recognized: #Independent countries e.g.:

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

#Internal independent countries which are under the protection of another country in matters of defense and foreign affairs, e.g.:

Netherlands Antilles nl, In vrijheid verenigd"Unified by freedom" , national_anthem = , common_languages = Dutch English Papiamento , demonym = Netherlands Antillean , capital = Willemstad , year_start = 1954 , year_end = 2010 , date_start = 15 December , ...

, the

Faroe Islands The Faroe Islands ( ), or simply the Faroes ( fo, Føroyar ; da, Færøerne ), are a North Atlantic island group and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. They are located north-northwest of Scotland, and about halfway bet ...

British Virgin Islands ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = Territorial song , song = "Oh, Beautiful Virgin Islands" , image_map = File:British Virgin Islands on the globe (Americas centered).svg , map_caption = , mapsize = 290px , image_map2 = Brit ...

etc. #

Colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

and other dependent political units e.g.

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

. There are, furthermore, several unrecognized countries and independence, secessionist, autonomy and nationalist movements throughout the world. See

list of unrecognized countries A number of polities have declared independence and sought diplomatic recognition from the international community as sovereign states, but have not been universally recognised as such. These entities often have ''de facto'' control of thei ...

Political status in Northern Ireland

Political Status was an alternative name for

Special Category Status In July 1972, William Whitelaw, the Conservative British government's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, granted Special Category Status (SCS) to all prisoners serving sentences in Northern Ireland for Troubles-related offences. This had bee ...

Political status around the world

Constitutional status of Cornwall The constitutional status of Cornwall has been a matter of debate and dispute. In modern times, Cornwall is an administrative county of England. In ethnic and cultural terms, until around 1700, Cornwall and its inhabitants were regarded as a ...

Constitutional status of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles The island groups of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles are all currently regions of Scotland. Their constitutional status has periodically been discussed, for example during the Scottish independence referendum campaign. Currently, they a ...

Disputed status of Gibraltar Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory, located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, is the subject of a territorial claim by Spain. It was Capture of Gibraltar, captured in 1704 during the War of the Sp ...

Disputed status of the isthmus between Gibraltar and Spain The Gibraltar territory currently contains an long section of the isthmus that links the Rock with mainland Spain. Spain does not acknowledge British sovereignty over Gibraltar beyond the fortified perimeter of the town as at 1704. The United K ...

Disputed territories of Northern Iraq The disputed territories of Northern Iraq ( ar, المناطق المتنازع عليها في العراق, ku, ناوچە جێناکۆکەکانی عێراق) are regions defined by article 140 of the Constitution of Iraq as being Arabised ...

Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute Sovereignty over the Falkland Islands ( es, Islas Malvinas) is disputed by Argentina and the United Kingdom. The British claim to sovereignty dates from 1690, when they made the first recorded landing on the islands, and the United Kingdom has exe ...

International recognition of Bangladesh The Bangladesh Liberation War ( bn, মুক্তিযুদ্ধ ''Muktijuddho'') was a revolutionary independence war in South Asia during 1971 which established the republic of Bangladesh. The war pitted East Pakistan against West Pakist ...

International recognition of Israel The State of Israel was formally established by the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, and was admitted to the United Nations (UN) as a member state on 11 May 1949. , it has received diplomatic recognition from 165 () of the to ...

Legal status of Alaska Alaskan nationalism asserts that Alaska is a distinct nation. Alaska has been one of the fifty states of the United States of America since 1959. Alaska's legal status within the United States has been disputed at times, most recently by a movement ...

Legal status of Germany The legal status of Germany concerns the question of the extinction, or otherwise continuation, of the German nation state (i.e., the German Reich created in the 1871 unification) following the rise and downfall of Nazi Germany, and constitution ...

Legal status of Hawaii The legal status of Hawaii is an evolving legal matter as it pertains to United States law. The US Federal law was amended in 1993 with the Apology Resolution which "acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the act ...

Legal status of the State of Palestine There are a wide variety of views regarding the legal status of the State of Palestine, both among the states of the international community and among legal scholars. The existence of a state of Palestine, although controversial, is a reality in ...

* Legal status of Texas *

Legal status of the Holy See The legal status of the Holy See, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, both in state practice and according to the writing of modern legal scholars, is that of a full subject of public international law, with rights an ...

* Political status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia *

Political status of Crimea Politically, Crimea is recognized as part of Ukraine by almost all members of the international community. After the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Russian troops were deployed to occupy Crimea and took over its government buildings.Political status of Kosovo The political status of Kosovo, also known as the Kosovo question, is the subject of a long-running political and territorial dispute between the Serbian (and previously, Yugoslav) government and the Government of Kosovo, stemming from the br ...

Political status of Nagorno-Karabakh The political status of Nagorno-Karabakh has remained unresolved since Azerbaijan's recognition as an independent state in 1991. During the Soviet Union, it had been an ethnic Armenian autonomous oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republ ...

* Political status of Kashmir *

Political status of Puerto Rico The political status of Puerto Rico is that of an unincorporated territory of the United States. As such, the island of Puerto Rico is neither a sovereign nation nor a U.S. state. Because of that ambiguity, the territory, as a polity, lacks ce ...

Political status of Taiwan The controversy surrounding the political status of Taiwan or the Taiwan issue is a result of World War II, the second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and the Cold War. The basic issue hinges on who the islands of Taiwan, Peng ...

Political status of the Azores The political status of the Azores is defined by the Political-Administrative Statute of the Autonomous Region of the Azores ( pt, Estatuto Político-Administrativo da Região Autónoma dos Açores, EPARAA), which acts as the standard legal consti ...

* Political status of the Cook Islands and Niue * Political status of Transnistria *

Political status of Western Sahara Western Sahara, formerly the Spanish Empire, Spanish colony of Spanish Sahara, is a territorial dispute, disputed territory claimed by both the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, Popular Front for the Liberation of the Saguia el Hamr ...

* Proposed Darfurian referendum *

Secessionism in Western Australia Secessionism has been a recurring feature of Western Australia's political landscape since shortly after Federation in 1901. The idea of self-governance or secession has often been discussed through local newspaper articles and editorials. On a ...

Status of Jerusalem The status of Jerusalem is disputed in both international law and diplomatic practice, with both the Israelis and Palestinians claiming Jerusalem as their capital city.Moshe Hirsch, Deborah Housen-Couriel, Ruth Lapidoth''Whither Jerusalem?: Pro ...

Status of territories captured by Israel The status of territories captured by Israel is the status of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula; all of which were captured by Israel over the course of the 1967 Six-Day War. The Sinai peninsula status wa ...

* Status of the Golan Heights {{DEFAULTSORT:Political Status International law International relations Diplomatic recognition Proposed administrative territorial entities