Talk:United Nations geoscheme for Europe/Archive 1

Holy See vs. Vatican City
This lemma states the Vatican City to be part of the United Nations geoscheme for Europe, the UN states the "Holy See" instead. The lemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_see states that Holy See and Vatican City are NOT the same. So which is the correct one? --77.49.98.226 (talk) 18:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Kosovo Republic
UN considers that Kosovo is part of another member state: Serbia. Until this status is resolved, it should be removed from the list.--DustBGD89-3 (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The UN response about the geoscheme
Seeing all the spats about European subdivisions (Europe is quite small for dividing!), I have decided to contact the UN and as what they think about the fact that their geoscheme is so extensively used on Wiki. This is what I received:

Dear xxxxx,

Thank you for your email.

The geographical groupings used by the United Nations Statistics Division follow the M49 Standard for Area Codes for Statistical use, details of which can be found here: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49.htm

The designations employed and the presentation of material at this site do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations.

"Regions" are so drawn as to obtain greater homogeneity in sizes of population, demographic circumstances and accuracy of demographic statistics (another example is Russia -- it is in the continent of Asia but it belongs in the Eastern Europe "region"). This nomenclature is widely used in international statistics but it is by no means universal.

I hope this is useful.

Best regards,

The UN Demographic Yearbook Team.

It seems that Wikipedia abuses the geoscheme, while there is actually an openly proposed geoscheme by the Geographical subdivision: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/23-gegn/wp/gegn23wp48.pdf --131.251.133.25 (talk) 11:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)