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)

Geographical supranational regions
(See also BCP 47 where these were imported as region subtags)

Code	Area				Subregions
001	World				249	002, 009, 010, 019, 142, 150
002		Africa			60	015, 202
015			Northern Africa		7	012, 434, 504, 729, 732, 788, 818
202			Sub-Saharan Africa		53	011, 014, 017, 018
011				Western Africa	17	132, 204, 270, 288, 324, 384, 430, 466, 478, 562, 566, 624, 654, 686, 694, 768, 854
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
017				Middle Africa	9	024, 120, 140, 148, 178, 180, 226, 266, 678
018				Southern Africa	5	078, 426, 516, 710, 748
010		Antarctica			1	010
019		Americas			57	(021, 419) or (003, 005)
003			North America		41	013, 021, 029
021				Northern America	5	060, 124, 304, 666, 840
419			Latin America and the Caribbean		52	005, 013, 029
005				South America	16	032, 068, 074, 076, 152, 170, 218, 238, 239, 254, 328, 600, 604, 740, 858, 862
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
142		Asia			50	030, 034, 035, 143, 145
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
143			Central Asia		5	398, 417, 762, 795, 860
145			Western Asia		18	031, 051, 048, 196, 268, 275, 368, 376, 400, 414, 422, 512, 634, 682, 760, 792, 784, 887
150		Europe			52	039, 151, 154, 155
039			Southern Europe		16	008, 020, 070, 191, 292, 300, 336, 380, 470, 499, 620, 674, 688, 705, 724, 807
151			Eastern Europe (including Northern Asia)		10	100, 112, 203, 348, 498, 616, 642, 643, 703, 804
154			Northern Europe		17	208, 233, 234, 246, 248, 352, 372, 428, 440, 578, 744, 752, 826, 833, 830
830				Channel Islands	3	831, 832, 680
155			Western Europe		9	040, 056, 250, 276, 438, 442, 492, 528, 756
009		Oceania			29	053, 054, 057, 061
053			Australia and New Zealand		6	036, 162, 166, 334, 554, 574
054			Melanesia		5	090, 242, 540, 548, 598
057			Micronesia		8	296, 316, 520, 580, 581, 583, 584, 585
061			Polynesia		10	016, 184, 258, 570, 612, 772, 776, 798, 876, 882

Other groupings

Code	Area
432	Landlocked developing countries (LLDCs)
722	Small island developing States (SIDS)
199	Least Developed Countries (LDCs)

Examples of geopolitical entities (countries or territories)
(See also ISO 3166-1 numeric for the complete set)

Code	Area
024	Angola
591	Panama
496	Mongolia
554	New Zealand
756	Switzerland
830	Channel Islands

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.

Extensions to M.49

Early editions of M.49 used one- or two-digit prefixes to designate economic regions rather than assigning 3-digit codes. These 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 13012, Algeria could be identified as being in North Africa (13000), which is itself in Africa (10000).

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 to create the four-digit code 8265, Scotland could be represented as a subdivision of the United Kingdom. Additional suffixes could be used to represent the other constituent units of the UK.

Codes no longer in use (obsolete since 1982)

Old Code	Old Area	New Code(s)
128	Canton and Enderbury Islands	296
200	Czechoslovakia	203, 703
720	Democratic Yemen	887
230	Ethiopia	231, 232
280	Federal Republic of Germany	276
274	Gaza Strip	275
278	German Democratic Republic	276
396	Johnston Island	581
488	Midway Islands	581
530	Netherlands Antilles	531, 534, 535
532	Netherlands Antilles	530, 533
582	Pacific Islands (Trust Territory)	580, 583, 584, 585
891	Serbia and Montenegro	499, 688
890	Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia	070, 191, 705, 807, 891
062	South-Central Asia	034, 143
736	Sudan	728, 729
810	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	031, 051, 112, 233, 268, 398, 417, 428, 440, 498, 762, 795, 804, 860
849	United States miscellaneous Pacific Islands	581
872	Wake Island	581
886	Yemen	887

Groupings no longer in use (obsolete since December 2021)

These groupings were introduced to the "Other groupings" of the M49 in 1996 but were removed in December 2021.

Examples of economic regions
(defined for statistical use only)

Code	Area
	Developed regions
021		Northern America
150		Europe
392		Japan
053		Australia and New Zealand
376		Israel
018		Southern Africa
	Developing regions
002		Africa (sometimes excluding Southern Africa)
419/019		Latin America and the Caribbean / Americas
029			Caribbean
013			Central America
005			South America
142*		Asia (* excluding Japan: 392, and sometimes also Israel: 376)
009*		Oceania (* excluding Australia and New Zealand: 053)
778	Transition countries
172		Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
		Transition countries of South-eastern Europe

See also

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

External links

• Standard country or area codes for statistical use