Countries of the Antarctic region

• AntarcticaAntarctic
• Bouvet IslandAntarctic
• French Southern and Antarctic LandsPort-aux-Français
• Heard Island and McDonald IslandsAntarctic
• South GeorgiaKing Edward Point

Who owns Antarctica?

Nobody. Antarctica is governed under the Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959 and in force since 1961. The treaty and the agreements later added to it set the continent aside for peace and science: military activity and mining are not allowed, and the territorial claims that some countries made earlier are put on hold for as long as the treaty lasts. More than fifty countries have joined it, India among them.

Who lives there?

There are no towns, no native people and no permanent residents. The only people are scientists and support staff at research stations, a few thousand in the southern summer and far fewer in the dark winter. India runs two stations, Maitri and Bharati. Staff study the ice, the climate, the ocean and the sky, and the ice itself holds a record of the Earth's air going back hundreds of thousands of years.

Why these places have country codes

The entries on this page are not countries. A country code is simply a label used by post offices, shipping companies, internet registries and statisticians, and remote, empty places need labels too. That is why Antarctica has the code AQ and its own internet ending, .aq. The islands listed with it lie in the cold southern oceans and belong to countries far away. Most have no permanent population, only weather stations, research bases and very large colonies of penguins and seals.

The land and the ice

Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and, counted by how little snow falls, the driest of the continents. Almost all of it lies under an ice sheet that is several kilometres thick in places and holds most of the fresh water on Earth. In the middle of winter the sun does not rise at the South Pole for months, and in summer it does not set.

Compare the countries of the Antarctic region