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Landlocked countries of the world according to The World Factbook.
A landlocked country is commonly defined as one enclosed or nearly enclosed by land.Definition of landlocked. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.Landlocked. Webster\'s 1913 Dictionary. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.Landlocked definition. MSN Encarta Dictionary. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.AskOxford. Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved on 2007-05-25. As of 2007, there are 43 landlocked countries in the world.
A sea that is almost landlocked is connected to the oceans by a strait only, such as the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Black Sea. This may be of strategic importance, with one or two other countries controlling the entrance, and/or be relevant for tides and freshwater content.
An island country can be conversely considered waterlockedDefinition of waterlocked. Dictionary.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-12. as it is entirely surrounded by water. In such cases, one must cross water to reach land abroad.
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Historically, being landlocked was regarded as a disadvantageous position. It cuts the country off from sea resources such as fishing, but more importantly cuts off access to seaborne trade which, even today, makes up a large percentage of international trade. Around the world, coastal regions tend to be wealthier and more heavily populated than inland ones.
Countries thus have made particular efforts to avoid being landlocked:
Losing access to the sea is often a great blow to nations:
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea now gives a landlocked country a right of access to and from the sea, without taxation of traffic through transit states. The United Nations has a programme of action to assist Landlocked Developing Countries, and the current responsible Undersecretary-General is Anwarul Karim Chowdhury.
Some countries may have a large coastline, but much of it may not be readily usable for trade and commerce. For instance, in its early history, Russia\'s only ports were on the Arctic Ocean and frozen shut much of the year. Gaining control of a warm water port was a major motivator of Russian expansion towards the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, some landlocked countries can have access to the ocean through wide navigable rivers. For instance, Paraguay (and Bolivia to a lesser extent) have access to the ocean through the Paraguay and Parana rivers, respectively.
Several countries have coastlines on landlocked seas, such as the Caspian and the Aral. Since these seas are sometimes considered to be lakes, and since they do not allow access to seaborne trade, countries such as Kazakhstan are still considered to be landlocked. (The Caspian Sea, however, is connected to the Black Sea via a canal between the Volga and Don rivers.)
They can be grouped in contiguous groups as follows:
There are the following \'single\' landlocked countries (each of them borders no other landlocked country):
If Armenia and Azerbaijan are counted as part of Europe, then Europe has the most landlocked countries, at 16. Kazakhstan is also sometimes regarded as a transcontinental country, so if that is included, the count for Europe goes up to 17. If these countries are included in Asia, then Africa has the most, at 15. Depending on the status of the three transcontinental countries, Asia has between 9 and 12, while South America has only 2. North America and Oceania are the only continents with no landlocked countries. (Oceania is also notable for having almost no land borders.)
After World War II, the Saarland and West-Berlin became landlocked while being separated from Germany. The Soviet Berlin blockade of 1948 stopped all land traffic. The threat of starvation of the large population was overcome by the Western Allied Berlin airlift.
A landlocked country surrounded entirely by other landlocked countries may be called a "doubly landlocked" country. A person in such a country has to cross at least two borders to reach a coastline.
There are only two such countries in the world:
Uzbekistan has borders with four countries (Turkmenistan to the southwest, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the south and east and Kazakhstan and the Aral Sea to the north) that border the landlocked but saltwater Caspian Sea, from which ships can reach the Sea of Azov by using the Volga-Don Canal, and thus the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the oceans.
There was no doubly landlocked country in the world from the 1871 Unification of Germany until the end of World War I. This is because Uzbekistan was part of Russia and then of the Soviet Union; while Liechtenstein borders Austria, which had an Adriatic coast until 1918.
The following countries are almost landlocked, as their short coastlines measure only a tiny fraction of the length of their land borders. The list gives the countries where this fraction is less than 5%:
A landlocked country may be given access to the sea through a corridor:
While the railway systems of Europe and North America all interconnect (albeit sometimes with incompatible technology), Africa, South and Central America, Asia and the Middle East generally do not connect very well. This might be called "rail-locked". Kathmandu, for instance, the capital of landlocked Nepal, does not have any railway connection over the Himalaya passes, unlike Tibet.
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