While there are indeed claimed lands on the moon, some areas on the planet are not owned. Known as “Terra nullius,” a Latin expression meaning “no-man’s-land,” these territories are not claimed by any sovereign nation.
Nobody wants a long beer
One of the most famous ownerless areas is Bir Tawil, located between Egypt and Sudan with an area of just over two thousand square kilometers. This area is a desert area that easily reaches 45°C in the summer and is completely uninhabited, except for nomadic tribes such as the Ababda who occasionally pass through the area.
The reason why no one claimed this common land is due to British imperialism in the region between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1899, the United Kingdom divided the lands of the two countries from the 22nd parallel, and everything to the north was Egypt and to the south Sudan. However, in 1902 new boundaries were drawn.
In this new division, Bir Tawil south of the 22nd parallel was given to Egypt, and the Hala’ib triangle in the north, which had an area of more than 20,000 square kilometers, to Sudan. These new boundaries were designed to consider which country the tribes that lived in each of these areas were closest to.
At the moment, Egypt has recognized the borders of 1899, and Sudan in 1902. In other words, they both want the Halayeb region, but not the Bir Tawil region. In 2014, American Jeremiah Heaton appropriated the land for himself, calling it North Sudan and declaring himself king in an effort to fulfill his daughter’s dream of becoming a princess. However, the communal land claim was not recognized by the United Nations.
Marie Byrd Land, a junk slice in Antarctica
Although Antarctica is nobody’s land internationally, Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom have already claimed pieces of land for themselves in the form of sectors of the Arctic Circle, but a slice of the frozen continent has not yet been unclaimed, Mary Byrd Land.
Named after the wife of Richard E. Byrd, a US Navy officer who explored the area in the early 1900s, Terra nullius is a very isolated and inaccessible area, even by Antarctic standards.
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Unowned enclaves on the border between Serbia and Croatia
When Yugoslavia dissolved in the 1990s, several regions on the eastern side of the Danube were disputed, but on the west bank four or more regions were not claimed by any of the remaining nations.
The largest is Gornja Siga, with an area of only 7 square kilometres. The area is a forest that acts as a floodplain of the Danube River. Technically it’s controlled by Croatia, but they point out that it’s actually Serbian territory, while Serbia doesn’t seem to care.
However, even if neither country shows interest in the region, there seem to be people who want the region. In 2015, a group of libertarians led by Czech Vit Jedlička declared Gornja Siga to be a small country called Liberland. The idea is that there will be a libertarian utopia without mandatory taxes, minimal government regulations and Bitcoin as a currency.
Although it didn’t take much interest in the site, Croatia seemed to not like the Libertarians being so close to it, and ordered the police force to arrest anyone who tried to enter the vacant land.
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