A microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a very small population or very small land area, but usually both. Some examples include: Nauru, Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Vatican City.
The smallest fully sovereign microstate is Vatican City, with 911 citizens as of July 2003 and an area of only 0.44 km²[1]. In Rome, Italy, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) (not to be confused with Malta, an island microstate in the Mediterranean) is an effectively non-territorial sovereign entity that might also be considered to be a microstate; its sovereignty is recognized by 105 states, 100 of which have entered into full diplomatic relations,[2] but unlike the Vatican City state, it has no substantive territorial base (the SMOM's only property, its headquarters buildings, holds extraterritorial status, similar to an embassy building). Neither the Vatican nor SMOM are members of the United Nations, although both have permanent observer status at the UN: Vatican City is a "non-member state" under the name of the atypical international entity of the Holy See, SMOM is an "other entity".
Microstates should not be confused with micronations, which are not recognized as sovereign states. Special territories without full sovereignty, such as the Channel Islands, are not considered microstates either.
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