Part 2. General economic and geographic description of the world
Lesson 4
Тheme 4: Political map of the world
Plan:
1. Stages and periods of the world map forming.
Typology of the world countries.
3. Political system: administrative and territorial division.
Stages and periods of the world map forming.
During XX century, amount of countries in the world had been increasing. First of all it was caused by redivision of the world after the First and Second World Wars. In the beginning of 1990, after disintegration of USSR (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – 15 states) , SFRY (The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia), Czechoslovakia ( Czech Republic and Slovakia from 1 January 1993), amount of countries in the world were 20 times as much. Since South Sudan became an independent state on 9 July 2011, there are now 195 independent sovereign states in the world (including disputed but defacto independent Taiwan), plus about 60 dependent areas, and five disputed territories, like Kosovo.
Amount of the U.N.O countries-members
ü was increasing in 1950–1989 thanks to joining the U.N.O. by countries that avoided from the colonial dependence.
ü Nowadays, all CIS countries, six republics of the former Yugoslavia, Czech Republic and Slovakia enter the U.N.O. In 2002, after a special referendum, Switzerland entered the U.N.O. Now only Vatican, which is observer, doesn’t enter the U.N.O.
ü Total amount is more than 190 countries.
Map of UN member states. Non-members shown: Vatican City, Palestinian territories, Western Sahara. Territories of states not recognized by the UN are not shown as non-members when they appear to be part of some UN member state on the UN's maps, including Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Somaliland, Taiwan, etc.