UN M49

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, although there have been exceptions to this rule.

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.

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)

• 001 World (248 entries) 019 Americas (57): 003 North America (41) 021 Northern America (5): 060, 124, 304, 666, 840 013 029 013 Central America (8): 084, 188, 222, 320, 340, 484, 558, 591 029 Caribbean (28): 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, 850 419 Latin America and the Caribbean (52) 013 029 005 South America (16): 032, 068, 074, 076, 152, 170, 218, 238, 239, 254, 328, 600, 604, 740, 858, 862 150 Europe (51) 154 Northern Europe (16): 208, 233, 234, 246, 248, 352, 372, 428, 440, 578, 744, 752, 826, 831, 832, 833 155 Western Europe (9): 040, 056, 250, 276, 438, 442, 492, 528, 756 151 Eastern Europe (10): 100, 112, 203, 348, 498, 616, 642, 643, 703, 804 039 Southern Europe (16): 008, 020, 070, 191, 292, 300, 336, 380, 470, 499, 620, 674, 688, 705, 724, 807 142 Asia (50) 145 Western Asia (18): 031, 051, 048, 196, 268, 275, 368, 376, 400, 414, 422, 512, 634, 682, 760, 792, 784, 887 143 Central Asia (5): 398, 417, 762, 795, 860 030 Eastern Asia (7): 156, 344, 392, 408, 410, 446, 496 034 Southern Asia (9): 004, 050, 064, 144, 356, 364, 462, 524, 586 035 South-eastern Asia (11): 096, 104, 116, 360, 418, 458, 608, 626, 702, 704, 764 002 Africa (60) 015 Northern Africa (7): 012, 434, 504, 729, 732, 788, 818 202 Sub-Saharan Africa (53) 011 Western Africa (17): 132, 204, 270, 288, 324, 384, 430, 466, 478, 562, 566, 624, 654, 686, 694, 768, 854 017 Middle Africa (9): 024, 120, 140, 148, 178, 180, 226, 266, 678 014 Eastern Africa (22): 086, 108, 174, 175, 231, 232, 260, 262, 404, 450, 454, 480, 508, 638, 646, 690, 706, 716, 728, 800, 834, 894 018 Southern Africa (5) 072, 426, 516, 710, 748 009 Oceania (29) 054 Melanesia (5): 090, 242, 540, 548, 598 053 Australia and New Zealand (6): 036, 162, 166, 334, 554, 574 057 Micronesia (8): 296, 316, 520, 580, 581, 583, 584, 585 061 Polynesia (10): 016, 184, 258, 570, 612, 772, 776, 798, 876, 882 010 Antarctica (1): 010

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.

Extensions to M.49

Early editions of M.49 used one- or two-digit affixes to designate economic regions rather than assigning 3-digit codes to them.

The 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. For example, by prefixing 13 to Algeria's code, 012, to create the five-digit code 13 012, Algeria could be identified as being in North Africa (13 000), which is itself in Africa (10 000).

One-digit suffixes were also permitted, to specify statistics of subdivisions of countries. For example, by suffixing 5 to the code for the United Kingdom 826 to create the four-digit code 826 5, Scotland could be represented as a subdivision of the United Kingdom.

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, it is still used by the UNSD and various United Nations reports.

Codes no longer in use (obsolete since 1982)

See also

• Address geocoding
• ISO 3166-1 numeric
• United Nations geoscheme
• List of countries by United Nations geoscheme

Notes

Citations

• Jensen, O.M.; Parkin, D.M.; MacLennan, R.; Muir, C.S.; Skeet, R.G., eds. (1991), (PDF), Cancer Registration: Principles and Methods, IARC Scientific Publication, no. 95, International Agency for Research on Cancer, pp. 208–211
• United Nations, Statistics Division (January 1970), (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