FAO Fisheries & Aquaculture CWP Handbook of Fishery Statistical Standards,

Concepts, Definitions and Classifications Fact Sheets

CWP Handbook of Fishery Statistical Standards Section D: COUNTRY OR AREAS

All countries or areas have official and formal designations. These are often very long and not suitable for use in statistical databases and publications, particularly in tabulations and graphs. These designations are therefore often simplified.

For example:
United Kingdom (or UK) refers to The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Comoros refers to The Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in publications are used simply for practical reasons, and are usually accompanied by a note that they do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the publishing agency concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Certain other terms used in statistical publications (for example, "developed" and "developing" economies) are based on standard UN definitions in this respect, and frequently bear relationship to the stage of economic development, and no relationship to the level of catch of the country concerned. The same applies to the now widely-used term "low-income food-deficit country" - LIFDC. The LIFDC classification is established by the World Bank as low-income in terms of Gross National Product (GNP) per caput, and by FAO as having a trade deficit for food in terms of calorie content.

Alpha and Digital Codes

In many tables, country or area entities are identified by alpha (or alphabetic) and/or numeric codes and this practice is frequently used in multilingual tables where the use of formal names, or even their common abbreviations is impossible because of space considerations. Such alpha and numeric codes have been developed by the UN Statistical Office, FAO, ILO, EU, ISO, etc. In the two annexes to this section are to be found lists of the more commonly used codes in fishery statistics.

The annexes include:
a) FAO multilingual country or area code (maximum 12 characters) used for fishery statistical purposes.

b) ISO 3-alpha country or area code (International Organization for Standardization).

c) ISO 2-alpha country or area code (International Organization for Standardization). ISO codes relate to geographical entities (See reference below).

d) UN 3-digit country or area code (See reference below).

e) Country or area names in English (maximum 24 characters).

f) Country or area names in French (maximum 24 characters).

g) Country or area names in Spanish (maximum 24 characters).

Some countries or areas are further presented under territorial or other components used in fishery statistics, for example:

1- Continents
2- Economic class
3- Regions and subregions

ANNEX D.I

ANNEX D.II

Bibliography

ISO. "Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions." International Standards ISO 3166-1: 1997 (E/F), International Organization for Standardization. Geneva, 1997.

UN. "Standard country or area codes for statistical use." Statistical Papers, Series M, No.49 Rev. 4;United Nations, New York,1999.

Logon name:
Password:
×