List of countries by area
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This is a list of the world's countries and their territories by total, land and water area, ranked by total area.
The entries in the list include areas according to the ISO 3166 standard, which includes sovereign states and dependent territories. All 193 Members of the United Nations plus the 2 observer states are numbered. States that enjoy some limited recognition and not found in ISO 3166 are also included in ranked order, but their areas are also included in the areas of these widely recognized states as they claim the same territory.
Territorial claims such as the countries that have claims in Antarctica are not realized. This also applies for supranational entities such as the European Union that have some degree of sovereignty.
The entry includes three subfields:
- Total area is the sum of all land and water areas delimited by international boundaries and coastlines.
- Land area is the aggregate of all surfaces delimited by international boundaries and coastlines, excluding inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, rivers)
- Water area is the sum of the surfaces of all inland water bodies, such as lakes, reservoirs, or rivers, as delimited by international boundaries and coastlines.
For uniformity criteria, data from the CIA World Factbook are used. The data includes only the de jure area of the respective country, these don't include de facto controlled territories nor other territorial claims, without prejudice of legitimation of these. Although most notes include the areas of such internal waters, this was excluded of these cases which the info affects of considerably way to the relation of the table. [lower-alpha 3] Typically, other statistical services of other countries calculate themselves, of which will defer the table's one's.