What is Vatican City?

This week, the Catholic Church chose a new leader, Pope Francis. The selection and announcement of the new pope took place in Vatican City, the Church's sovereign territory within Rome. Is Vatican City really "the world's smallest country", or a country at all?  And what's the difference between Vatican City and the Holy See? Read all about it!

Map of Vatican City (click to enlarge). By Francesco Piraneo G./Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA; source).

What is Vatican City?

Vatican City was created by the Lateran Treaty in 1929 to ensure the Catholic Church's independence from the control of other countries, and has an area of only about 0.17 sq mi (0.44 sq km), or about one-eighth the size of Central Park in New York. In addition to the Pope, the state said to have a population of about 800, most of whom are either clergy or members of the Swiss Guard.

Located within the city of Rome, Vatican City is surrounded on all sides by Italy, and nearly encircled by a stone city wall except for in St. Peter's Square, where it is separated from Italy only by a white line drawn on the ground. Various religious and administrative buildings are located within Vatican City's confines, but more than half of its area is taken up by the green space of the Vatican Gardens.

Map: The Falkland Islands' Disputed Seas

The Falkland Islands, a South Atlantic territory disputed between the U.K. and Argentina, held a status referendum this week in which 99.8% of voters defied Argentina by choosing to remain British. But it's not just about the islands - also at stake are legal rights to the sea for hundreds of miles around.

Zones of maritime jurisdiction around the Falkland Islands, highlighting area disputed between the U.K and Argentina. Map by Evan Centanni (country coastlines from the Natural Earth dataset). All rights reserved.

The Disputed Seas of the Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands are administered by the U.K. as an overseas territory, but are also claimed based on historical arguments by Argentina, which calls them "las Islas Malvinas". Both countries have signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which defines ownership and legal rights for the waters surrounding coastal countries. According to the UNCLOS, each country is entitled to three basic zones of control in its surrounding seas:

Syria Uprising Map: March 2013 (#9)

There are newer versions of this map available. To see them, view all Syria updates.

Syria's civil war has continued to spread eastward across the country, with rebels taking two major towns over the last month. Below is the updated conflict map, plus a summary of recent territorial changes.

Activity and cities held by rebels and other groups in Syria, updated for March 2013. Map by Evan Centanni, starting from this blank map by German Wikipedia user NordNordWest. License: CC BY-SA

Map: Laos and Tajikistan Join WTO

World Trade Organization members in green. New members Laos and Tajikistan highlighted (click to enlarge). Map by Evan Centanni, modified from this Wikimedia map by Muso (license: CC BY-SA).

Libya Changes Official Name

Map of the last stage of Libya's 2011 civil war (click to see full map and original article). Map by Evan Centanni, based on public domain map from Wikipedia (source).

State of Libya
Last month, the North African country of Libya changed its official long-form name to "State of Libya" (Arabic: Dawlat Libya). This comes as part of Libya's governmental transition following its 2011 civil war, in which a rebel coalition defeated the regime of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Over the last year, the country's formal name had not been clearly defined, with the country referred to in most documents simply as "Libya". The rebel National Transitional Council had only made a point of ceasing to use the Gaddafi-era name.

During the last decades of Gaddafi's reign, the country was known in long form as the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya". The word "jamahiriya" was coined by Gaddafi by combining the Arabic words for "republic" (jumhuriya) and "the masses" (jamahir).