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With this tool you can keep track of the different countries you have visited in the world. While I personally enjoy fast travel, simply crossing off countries is something I try to avoid, despite my desire to complete lists. Traveling is something to be enjoyed, by each in their own way, and we should not see it as a list of achievements to tick off. Nevertheless, it is fun to keep track of which countries you have visited in your travels.

When compiling such a list, the inevitable question arises: what constitutes a country? In fact, the main reason I made this tool is discontentment with existing websites that fail to answer this question consistently. Below, I will detail my definition, discuss exceptions, and give some further arguments.

In my book, a country is an independent, sovereign state (no government above it) that has been recognized as such by at least a majority of the undisputed countries. In practice, this means that it has to be a United Nations member state.

The UN has 193 member states, some of which are only partially recognized, but always acknowledged by the majority. Naturally, these are all included in the list.

There are two observer states, namely Vatican City (which is undisputed), and Palestine (which is only partially recognized, but by a majority). These too are included, so that we have 195 countries.

Kosovo is as of yet not a UN member state, yet a de facto independent state and recognized by the majority of UN member states. It is therefore included, making 196.

Taiwan is only a former UN member state, but independent and sovereign. However, due to pressure from China, which does not seem to accept other member states acknowledging both China and Taiwan, it is recognized only by a small minority (which in turn, do not recognize China). It is a sensitive situation, but for now, I will include Taiwan based on its history. That's 197.

There is one more country that I want to include, even though it is not exactly a state; it even has no citizens. Still, for a traveling list it seems impossible to exclude a whole continent. Of course, number 198 is Antarctica.

There are several disputed, de facto sovereign states existing in the world, often designated as an autonomous region by the official government. They are typically recognized by none or only a few UN member states, but at most by a minority. These are all excluded. These states include Northern Cyprus, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Somaliland, Artsakh, and Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Cook Islands and Niue are largely autonomous and undisputed. However, they are not UN member states, New Zealand is responsible for defence and a large part of foreign affairs, and citizens of both states are automatically citizens of New Zealand. On the other hand, they are members of several specialized UN agencies and have independent diplomatic ties with many countries (albeit a minority). For now, they are excluded.

There are many other regions in the world that enjoy a certain degree of, or even full autonomy, yet are not counted as sovereign states due to similar reasons. These include territories such as Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Curacao, French Polynesia, French Guiana, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Zanzibar, and many more. Despite being interesting travel destinations, all of these are excluded from the list.

For many similar tools, you can often see countries being split up, such as the states of Australia or the United States of America. While there is certainly some merit in this from a traveler's viewpoint, due to the great variety in such large countries, it becomes very hard to draw a line this way - when is a district big or unique enough to appear on the list? Therefore, I adhere to sovereign countries only.