Countries with a territorial extension of less than 1,000 square kilometers are considered micro-countries. The Vatican, the smallest nation-state on the planet, has only 0.44 km². Many cities have larger areas, such as the capital of Pará, Belém, with 1,059 km². Of the 194 existing countries, 25 fall into this classification.
Most of these tiny countries are located in Oceania (Nauru, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Palau, Federation of Micronesian States, Tonga and Kiribati), in Europe (Vatican, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Malta and Andorra) and in Central America (Saint Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica). Asia has three (Barain, Maldives and Singapore); and the representatives of Africa are: São Tomé and Príncipe and Seychelles.
Despite being small in territorial extension, microcountries have political autonomy, their own laws and some of them are highly socioeconomically developed. Located in Europe, Liechtenstein is the sixth smallest country in the world, however, it is industrialized and has a very strong economy.
European microcountries stand out for their social indicators: they all have a high Human Development Index (HDI). On the other hand, the microcountries of Central America and Oceania have an underdeveloped economy, based mainly on subsistence agriculture.
By Wagner de Cerqueira and Francisco
Graduated in Geography