ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 2: Country subdivision code. It was first published in 1998.

The purpose of ISO 3166-2 is to establish an international standard of short and unique alphanumeric codes to represent the relevant administrative divisions of all countries in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than their full names. Each complete ISO 3166-2 code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen:

• The first part is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the country;
• The second part is a string of up to three alphanumeric characters, which is usually obtained from national sources and stems from coding systems already in use in the country concerned, but may also be developed by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA) itself.

Each complete ISO 3166-2 code can then be used to uniquely identify a country subdivision in a global context. Currently there are more than 4200 codes defined in ISO 3166-2.^[1]

For some countries, codes are defined for more than one level of subdivisions.^[2] The codes for the first-level subdivisions are defined in the official standard without the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the country as prefix (to distinguish from the codes for the second-level subdivisions), and thus do not guarantee uniqueness in a global context by themselves. These codes can be completed by adding the alpha-2 code as prefix.

[edit] Current codes

For a complete list of the ISO 3166-2 codes of each country sorted by country name, see the last column of the table of officially assigned code elements in ISO 3166-1.

[edit] Subdivisions included in ISO 3166-1

For the following countries, a number of their subdivisions in ISO 3166-2, most of them dependent territories, are also assigned their own country codes in ISO 3166-1:

Notes

1. ^ Taiwan is included as a subdivision of China, as the United Nations considers it as part of China even though it is not de facto under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China. In ISO 3166-1, Taiwan is listed as "Taiwan, Province of China" due to its political status within the UN.
2. ^ ^{a b} Collectively Svalbard and Jan Mayen is assigned its own country codes in ISO 3166-1.

[edit] Format

The format of the ISO 3166-2 codes is different for each country. The codes may be alphabetic, numeric, or alphanumeric, and they may also be of constant or variable length. The following is a table of the ISO 3166-2 codes of each country grouped by their format (excluding countries with no defined codes):

Note: For countries where codes are defined for more than one level of subdivisions, the format shown here is of the codes for the second-level subdivisions, i.e., the codes defined in the official standard with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the country as prefix.

[edit] Editions and changes

There have been two editions of ISO 3166-2. The first edition (ISO 3166-2:1998) was published on 1998-12-20, and the second edition (ISO 3166-2:2007) was published on 2007-12-13.

Between different editions, the ISO 3166/MA updates the code lists by announcing the changes in newsletters.^[3] Changes in ISO 3166-2 comprise mostly of spelling corrections, addition and deletion of subdivisions, and modification of the administrative structure.

[edit] See also

• Table of administrative divisions by country
• UN/LOCODE — United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations
• List of FIPS region codes in FIPS 10-4, withdrawn from the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) in 2008
• Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), which covers the subdivisions of the members of the European Union

[edit] References

1. ^ "ISO 3166-2 State Codes". CommonDataHub. http://www.commondatahub.com/live/geography/state_province_region/iso_3166_2_state_codes. 
2. ^ "subdivision_hierarchy.xml". Unicode Consortium. http://unicode.org/repos/cldr/trunk/docs/attachments/subdivision_hierarchy.xml. 
3. ^ "Updates on ISO 3166". International Organization for Standardization (ISO). http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/updates_on_iso_3166.htm. 
4. ^ "Statoids Newsletter January 2008". Statoids.com. http://www.statoids.com/n0801.html. 

[edit] External links

• ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
  • ISO 3166-2
  • Tracking changes in ISO 3166-2
• Administrative Divisions of Countries ("Statoids"), Statoids.com

The following external links contain lists of ISO 3166-2 codes; however, they are not up-to-date to the latest edition of codes.

• Country sub-entity name code, GEFEG.FX
• Country, state and province codes, Moving Image Collections
• LLOW linklist, LanguageServer, University of Graz
• Appendix A: Standard Codes used for ADAMS Import Files, from ADAMS User Guide, World Anti-Doping Agency
• http://docs.equest.com/eQuestCountryAndStateCodes.xls