UN M49

UN M49, also called the Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (Series M, No. 49), is a system made by the United Nations Statistics Division. It helps organize data about different places around the world. Each place gets a special three-digit number, which can stand for many kinds of areas, like a continent or a country.

These numbers stay the same even if a country's name changes. They only change when the actual land or borders of a place change a lot. Some of these codes were first used in another system called ISO 3166-1 in 1981, but the United Nations has been using them since 1970.

The codes for bigger areas, like parts of continents, are also used in computer language tags. This helps computers understand languages from different regions. These codes were added to a list kept by IANA, following rules set by IETF's BCP 47.

Code lists

The UN M49, or the Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use, is a system used by the United Nations for statistical purposes. It assigns a unique three-digit code to various geographical and political regions, including continents and countries.

As of December 2021, the M.49 area codes include regions such as the World, which has 248 entries. These entries are further divided into categories like the Americas with 57 entries, Europe with 51 entries, Asia with 50 entries, Africa with 60 entries, and Oceania with 29 entries. Each of these broader regions is subdivided into more specific areas, such as Northern America, Central America, and the Caribbean within the Americas, or Northern Europe, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe within Europe.

Private-use codes and reserved codes

Besides the regular country codes, there are special numbers from 900 to 999 that are kept for private use. These can be used to group countries, territories, or regions in special ways for specific projects. They might appear in some UN reports, but they are not the same everywhere and can change.

The code 000 is also kept but not used for any real place. It is used when there is no data or when no specific region applies. When a region is unknown, private-use codes are usually the best choice. For example, the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository uses 961 for a group called Outlying Oceania.

Extensions to M.49

Older versions of M.49 used one- or two-digit numbers added to the main codes to describe economic areas. These extra numbers helped group data together easily. For example, adding 13 to Algeria's code (012) made 13 012, showing Algeria is in North Africa (13 000), which is part of Africa (10 000).

It was also possible to add a one-digit number at the end to show parts of a country. Adding 5 to the United Kingdom's code (826) created 826 5, representing Scotland as part of the United Kingdom.

Developed and developing regions

The United Nations Statistics Division groups economic regions into two types: developed and developing regions. This helps make statistics easier to understand. Even though this way of grouping was taken out of the UN M49 code system in December 2021, the United Nations still uses these terms in many reports.

Codes no longer in use (obsolete since 1982)

This section lists area codes that were used in the past but are no longer in use since 1982. These codes were part of a system created by the United Nations to help organize statistical information about different places around the world.