The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created and maintains the ISO 3166 standard – Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions.[1] The ISO 3166 standard contains three parts:
- ISO 3166-1 – Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes[2] defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It defines three sets of country codes:
- ISO 3166-2 – Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 2: Country subdivision code[3] defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces, states, departments, regions) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.
- ISO 3166-3 – Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries[4] defines codes for country names which have been deleted from ISO 3166-1 since its first publication in 1974.
The ISO 3166-1 standard currently comprises 249 countries, 193 of which are sovereign states that are members of the United Nations. Many dependent territories in the ISO 3166-1 standard are also listed as a subdivision of their administering state in the ISO 3166-2 standard.