The 12 New Countries That Might Exist Soon

as history continues evolving with Time new and old countries come in and out of existence pretty much all the time dozens of new UN recognized countries have come into existence in only the past 30 plus years since the Cold War Began coming to a close back in 1990 and as a result the world map has officially changed dozens of times in many of our lifetimes East Germany faded out of existence in 1990 when it was legally absorbed by West Germany between 1990 and 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the birth of 15 newly recognized independent states and arguably 16th in the form of chia which is a really interesting case study in how countries can be born and die Chia an ethnically and religiously distinct territory of Russia unilaterally declared its independence from the Soviet Union and Russia in 1991 and remained a deao independent state for nearly a decade until it was forcefully res subjugated by the Russian armed forces in 2000 during that whole time though the only other country that ever formerly recognized chesa's Independence was Taliban ruled Afghanistan Chia fought two massive and brutal Wars of Independence against the Russians in the 1990s the first from 1994 to '96 that killed more than 100,000 people and resulted in their deao independence and the second war from 1999 to 2000 when the Russians finally overran Cheta and reincorporated it back into the Russian State many high ranking chuchin government officials then fled the country and formed a chuchin government in Exile in London that has continued existing to this day while in October of 20122 in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Ukrainian government voted a formally recognize chesa status is being temporarily occupied by Russia and recognize the cin government in Exile as the territory's sole legitimate government essentially extending Ukraine's legal recognition of chchchchia as an independent state now the process of yugoslavia's collapse after 1991 similarly led to the creation of six or seven new independent countries depending on your point of view Slovenia Croatia bosnan and Herzegovina North Macedonia and the formerly United Serbia and Montenegro all emerged by the early 2000s while Montenegro further declared its own independent from Serbia in 2006 and then Kosovo unilaterally declared their independence from Serbia 2 in 2008 which remains legally disputed by Serbia and therefore remains controversial in 1993 Czechoslovakia split into two new countries czechia and Slovakia the same year Eritrea managed to finally declare their own independence from Ethiopia after another decades long Independence struggle in 1994 Pala a small Pacific Island state achieved its sovereignty and effective independence from the United States in 2002 East Timmer became the first new independent country to emerge in the 21st century after a long independent struggle against Indonesia and then in 2011 South Sudan finally achieved its own independence from the rest of Sudan after another decades long Independence struggle that resulted in it becoming the world's youngest widely recognized independent state and member of the United Nations at least for now dozens of new countries became independent across the 199s but since the 21st century began we've only seen the four mostly widely recognized examples of East Montenegro Kosovo and South Sudan happened so far and no more widely recognized examples have taken place in the past 13 years now since 2011 and that BS an interesting question what are the most likely new countries that have the possibility to emerge on the world stage next there are many many possibilities out there that I'll cover in this video and many others that I won't I'm not going to cover any states here that already exist in a deao sense but lack widescale International recognition such as Koso claimed by Serbia the sahur Arab Democratic Republic claimed by Morocco the Turkish Republic of Northern Cypress claimed by Cyprus abazia and South oia claimed by Georgia transnistria claimed by mova Somali land claimed by Somalia or the Republic of China on Taiwan claimed by the People's Republic of China on the mainland I'm only going to cover potential new independent states that don't yet exist in either a legal desure sense nor in a deao sense and so to start this list off it seems most likely right now that the next newest country that will emerge soon and that will probably also be widely recognized as the 194th member of the United Nations will be banville in the Western Pacific banville is geographically the westernmost en largest island in the Solomon Islands archipelago but while the rest of the Solomon Islands are an independent nation banville has long been politically a part of Papua New Guin instead the history dates back to the very end of the 19th century in 1899 when the colonial German Empire laid claim to banville and annexed it into their nearby colony of German New Guinea then during World War I the Australians invaded and occupied the German colony in ug Guinea including banville and after the war's conclusion in 1920 all of modern day Papu and ug Guinea became an Australian mandate through the League of Nations which led to a long era of more than 60 years of nearly continuous Australian administration of the territory that was only briefly interrupted by the Japanese invasion of World War II after the war PPA New Guinea evolved into a un mandate under Australian Administration and then in the 1960s Australian geologists discovered that banville had massive deposits of copper on the Island so the Australian authorities did what every other colonial government at the time was doing and set up a huge copper mine on the island in 1972 that at the time was the largest open pit mine operating anywhere in the world the copper mine quickly became hugely important to the economy of Papa New Guinea it alone produced more than 45% of Papua New Guinea's entire National export revenue and the government received 20% of the mine's total profits of which the indigenous people of banville themselves only received a 0.5% to 1 25% share of the total profit thousands of outside workers from the Papa New Guinea Mainland and from Australia came to work at the banville mine across the 1970s and as more of them came and most of the prophets left the island the indigenous people in bugville began growing increasingly resentful there are massive cultural and linguistic differences between the Papua guine Mainland and banville Papua New guine itself is usually classified as being the most linguistically diverse country in the entire world with no less than 893 separate languages that are known to be spoken in the country country it's also extremely rural with only about 133% of the population today living in cities across some of the most challenging mountainous and rainforest terrain on the planet Papa New Guinea is still such an isolated and remote part of the world that there isn't even an accepted consensus on what the country's actual population is still today the government officially reports their population today to be about 9.4 million but there are credible studies conducted as recently as December of 2022 then estimate the true population of the country is actually closer to 7 million people nearly double what the government actually reports compared to the Papa New Guinea Mainland banville is much smaller and less populated with only around 300,000 residents today whose culture and ethnicity is more closely related to the melanesians of the neighboring Solomon Islands then to the Papua New Guinea Mainland and so perhaps understandably conflict began to Bubble Up to the surface between banville and Papua New Guinea after the opening of the massive open pit copper mine in the early 1970s Australia granted Papa new guinia Independence in September of 1975 that included banville but just a few days before the Independence was granted banville unilaterally declared itself as the independent republic of the north Solomons instead but after it failed to gain any International recognition banville agreed on a settlement several months later in August of 1976 to become absorbed into Papa New Guinea with a degree of political autonomy but tensions between banville and the Papa New Guinea government over the continued operation of the mine on the island continued growing until they exploded in outright Rebellion in 1988 when a separatist faction on the island called the banville Revolutionary Army rose up to fight for banville independence this resulted in a truly devastating decade war for independence that lasted until 1998 and which has been described by leaders as the largest military conflict to have been fought in the region of Oceania since the second world war as the Papa New Guinea government cracked down on banville hard in order to maintain their access to the Island's crucial copper mine Papu Nini enforced a total Maritime blockade of the Island and deployed thousands of their soldiers to the island to enforce Papua New guin's Authority estimates vary greatly as to how many people were killed in the decade long War but it's usually estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 people in banville died during the conflict while at least 300 Papu guini soldiers were killed and thousands more were wounded that means that in the decade long war for independence between 1988 to 1998 roughly 10% of banville entire pre-war population died while tens of thousands more were placed into internally displaced person camps the two Waring sides agreed on a ceasefire in 1997 and Papo Nini forces began withdrawing from the island the following year in 1998 while Australian peacekeepers came in to take their place a formal peace agreement was settled between banville and the papini government in 2001 that solidified banville status as a fully autonomous part of the country and which also granted banville the right to hold a non-binding referendum on outright Independence within 20 years in the future that promised referendum was eventually held in banville at the end of 2019 which saw an absolutely overwhelming vote of 98.3% of Voters on the island choosing independence with a huge 87.4% voter turnout showing that the will of the banville people clearly desired Independence and though the referendum was technically non-binding on the part of the Papa New Guinea government the overwhelming results of it for Independence and all of the previous history have made it extremely difficult for the government just to Simply ignore it and so in July of 2021 banville and the Papo New Guinea government came to an agreement that banville will be granted its formal independence from the country no earlier than 2025 and no later than 2027 pending legal ratification by the Papa New Guinea Parliament and although to date when this video was made that ratification hasn't been given yet it seems fairly certain still that banville will become the world's next largely recognized independent country sometime by 2027 and will likely replace South Sudan as the world's youngest independent country by then but what about other less likely candidates for new countries to emerge relatively nearby to banville is also new calonia which is probably at least in my opinion the next most likely place to eventually become a newly independent country New Caledonia currently Still Remains as a legal overseas territory of France despite the fact that the island is in the Pacific and is located about 177,000 kmers away from Metropolitan France over on the other side of the world in Europe the French annexed new calonia back in 1853 and ever since then successive waves of European Polynesian and other settlers have come to the island that have made the indigenous ethnic konok people on the island of minority where today they only represent about 41% of new caledonia's total population of about 270,000 people with Europeans representing another 24% of the population and various Polynesians and other groups representing most of the rest for decades under French colonial rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries the indigenous kanak were largely marginalized excluded from the Island's economy and eventually confined into a system of reservations like indigenous Americans were in the Western Hemisphere by the 1970s a modern Independence and sovereignty movement began growing in popularity among the indigenous kanok people on the island who were frustrated with their lower socioeconomic status relative to the European settlers of the island and so the movement steadily adopted more violent methods to advance their cause the biggest violent incident occurred in 1988 when a group of 30 heavily armed kanok Independence Fighters attacked a French military outpost on the island killing four French soldiers and taking another 36 people including some civilians as hostages the group demanded that the hostages would be released in exchange for serious talks with the French government on the independence of New Caledonia France refused to negotiate and deployed a crack hostage recovery team made up of dozens of French Commandos paratroopers and G counterterror specialist to raid them instead in the ensuing raid the French killed 19 of the kic hostage takers and successfully freed all of the hostages while two of the French soldiers in the assault team were also killed resulting in the total deaths of 25 people during the bloody incident in the aftermath the French government and the kanuk independence movement agreed on a 10-year truce to secure stability on the island and after the decade had passed in 1998 without any other major incidents the French government and the major Pro and anti-independence parties on the island all signed the newa Accord which established a 20-year transitional period until 2018 in which certain powers would be transferred to the local government and which also guaranteed that after those 20 years beginning in 2018 new calonia would be allowed to host three separate Independence referendums that would determine the Island's future political status and so the first of these Independence referendums in New Caledonia was hosted in 2018 which was soundly rejected with 56.7% of Voters choosing to remain with France and only 43.3% of Voters choosing independence with a total voter turnout on the island of 81% then the second Independence referendum was hosted a couple years later in 2020 That Grew much more narrow this time with only 53.3% of Voters choosing to remain with France and 46.7% of Voters choosing to become independent with an even higher voter turnout this time of 85.7% the momentum appeared to be rising for the pro- independent side and with the final referendum on Independence scheduled for December 2021 all eyes were fixated on what would happen next but in between the second and third referendums the covid-19 pandemic hit the island and ravaged it which resulted in more than three 300 deaths that disproportionately affected the indigenous Kana community that was more pro-independence it quickly became clear that the next referendum would take place during a period of customary mourning within the Kana Community for their lost ones but the government's Health restrictions had made campaigning for the final referendum largely impossible so the pro-independence parties on the island became worried that this would all contribute to a lower voter turnout than in either of the previous referendums and so they began asking the French government to reschedule the final referendum until after the pandemic get settled down more but the French government refused to reschedule the referendum and went ahead with it as originally planned in December of 2021 which led to all of the pro-independence parties on the island announcing that they would boycott the vote and protest as a result the remain with France Choice secured an overwhelming 96.5% of the 2021 vote while only 3.5% of Voters chose Independence and with a very low voter turnout this time of only 43.9% of the island since all the pro-independence parties had boycotted it but none of that stopped France's president Emanuel macron from visiting New Caledonia himself afterwards where he proudly proclaimed that the 2021 vote had confirmed the will of caledonians to stay French while he further emphasized the new calonia had a vital role to play in France's geopolitical strategy for the Indo Pacific region new calonia places Sovereign French territory relatively nearby to the South China Sea Taiwan and China while new calonia much like Bo enville is also rich in specific natural resources new calonia is specifically HED to between 10% and 25% of all the world's proven reserves of nickel a metal that is becoming increasingly important as a major component of batteries and electric vehicles France's control over new calonia makes it the fourth largest producer of nickel in the entire world remaining only behind the likes of Russia the Philippines and Indonesia after the controversial 2021 referendum France has publicly left open the possibility that another referendum on Independence could be hosted in New Caledonia again within the time span of one or two more Generations from now or in other words maybe in 20 to 40 years from now but the pro-independence parties in New Caledonia have all adamantly rejected this timeline and they're currently in the process of attempting to challenge the 2021 referendum results to the international court of justice in the ha but it's unclear if the court will actually even agree to hear their case or not as it stands now new caledonia's near-term future looks like it will continue remaining as a part of France but in the more distant future another referendum could potentially always happen that could lead to the Island's Independence eventually remaining within the indopacific region we'll refocus a bit on the area of Western New Guinea the Western half of the island of New Guinea that is politically controlled by Indonesia like the other half of the island that's independent under Papua New Guinea Western New Guinea is one of the most remote isolated and undeveloped corners of the world remaining in the 21st century home to only about 5.6 million people today in an area that's larger than Japan it's also one of the most sparsely populated regions of the world as well the area is so remote and its mountainous jungle interior so difficult to access that it's estimated there are still at least 40 uncontacted tribes remaining there who maintain no contact with the outside world and continue living a prehistoric hunter gatherer lifestyle more than 400 languages are believed to be spoken in Western New Guinea while the largest settlement in the territory jaap Pera is more than 3700 km or 2300 M away from Indonesia's Capital Jakarta about as far away as London is from Armenia as a result the culture and ethnicity in Western ug Guinea is extremely different and isolated from the rest of Indonesia and there's been an ongoing separatist movement in the region for decades pretty much ever since Indonesia took the area over when Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands in August of 1945 it initially didn't include the Western half in New Guinea which still remained under Dutch Colonial control the Dutch wanted to retain their own control over Western ug Guinea and effectively turn it into a self-governing territory of theirs but Indonesia seriousely contested this asserting that it was the legal successor to all of the territory of the former Dutch East Indies which included all of Western New Guinea 2o a decade and a half later in 1961 the Dutch prepared to Grant Western ug Guinea their separate Independence which led to the first raising of the Region's morning star flag in its history a symbol that has ever since become deeply attached to the west Papa Independence Movement but Indonesia's Fierce opposition to this development led to them and the Netherlands coming together to negotiate the New York agreement in 1962 which made it so that instead of becoming outright independent Western New Guinea's Authority would be temporarily transferred from the Dutch to the United Nations and then later transferred again to the Indonesian government who had then handled the preparation for a self-determination referendum in the territory to take place that would determine its ultimate future in the years that Then followed Indonesian government forces reportedly began arresting and exiling pro-independence political activists and leaders in the territory and when they finally allowed a referendum on the territory status to take place in 196 9 rather than opening it up to everybody in the territory with one vote per person the Indonesians only granted a total of 1,22 local Representatives that they had handpicked to take part in the referendum the right to actually vote on it who naturally all voted unanimously to merge Western ug Guinea with Indonesia the Indonesian authorities have argued ever since that that system of Representative voting was necessary because of the territory's geographically difficult terrain remoteness and the lack of development in the region but nonetheless class a militant pro-independence movement was born in Western New Guinea that is since evolved into the modern free Papa movement which continues to violently fight against the Indonesian State for the independence of Western New Guinea and since 2021 the movement has been considered as a terrorist organization by the Indonesian government while even flying the movement's morning star flag is legally considered by the Indonesian government to be treason that can carry up to a 7 to 20e prison sentence and since the Indonesian government is very strict about allowing foreign journalist permission to enter the territory the information on what exactly the situation looks like in the territory from an independence perspective is very difficult to par so who really ultimately knows Western ug Guinea could eventually become an independent country and free itself from Indonesian rule like East Timber did before it in 2002 or it might also not but either way another island territory that's probably a lot more certain to eventually become an independent country one day is going to be Greenland Greenland is currently governed as an autonomous territory belong into the Kingdom of Denmark as it has for centuries ever since 1814 when Denmark acquired the territory from Norway since that time Denmark fully Incorporated Greenland into the Danish state in 1953 when it granted all of Greenland's residents Danish citizenship while in 1979 Denmark granted Greenland a referendum on home rule that was approved while a further referendum on increasing the Island's self-government even more was granted in 2008 that was also approved by 75% of Voters that transferred most of the Danish government's authorities and respons responsibilities in Greenland to the local greenlandic government leaving pretty much only Greenland's foreign and defense policies monetary policy and citizenship policy still in the hands of Denmark despite its huge Geographic size though Greenland's population is very small today and only about 57,000 people only about the same as a medium-sized town and about 90% of the small population on the island are ethnically Inuit While most of the remaining 10% are composed of Danes and other European ethnicities under the terms of the 2008 self-government referendum that was overwhelmingly approved in Greenland the island was also granted the right by Denmark to hold an independence referendum whenever they wanted to to determine the Island's ultimate political status in future despite This legal ability to call a referendum though there has long been a lot of hesitation within Greenland to actually move forward with fullscale Independence rather than maintaining the status quo as an autonomous part of Denmark Denmark currently maintains a generous annual subsidy to the island of $500 million a year which accounts for 20% of Greenland's entire small economy and provides for more than half of the local greenlandic government's budget moreover through Denmark greenlandic residents are also all citizens of the European Union as well if Greenland decided to go their own separate way from Denmark they would almost certainly lose the Danish subsidies and lose their EU citizenship as well which would almost certainly negatively affect the greenlandic economy nonetheless support for Independence in Greenland appears to remain fairly High a 2019 poll conducted by the University of Copenhagen in Greenland found that a w being 67.7% of adults in Greenland desired the island to become a fully independent state at some point in the future with 32.4% of greenlandic adults further insisting that secession will still benefit their economy and improve their living conditions in April of 2023 the movement for full greenlandic Independence appeared to advance significantly when the greenlandic parliament unveiled its first ever draft Constitution the Greenland could one day rely upon if it ever comes to negotiating its independence from Denmark in the event that Greenland hosts arest referendum on Independence that passes this draft Constitution will become the framework for a final Constitution that will transform Greenland into an independent republic and though no discussions on a timeline for an independence referendum have been put forward yet the next parliamentary election in Greenland is currently scheduled for next year in 2025 and its results could indicate whether or not the independence movement on the island will move further forward it therefore wouldn't be terribly surprising if Greenland one day soon does actually host a legal referendum on Independence that passes and makes itself one of the world's newest independent countries in the process while other prospective independent country candidates may find it difficult to secure the right to a legal referendum of their own one other such prospective candidate is Scotland where the idea of an independent Scottish nation has been around for a very long time Scotland indeed was an independent Kingdom for many centuries across the middle ages and fought many wars against England to maintain that Independence Scotland was first joined with England in a personal Union in 160 3 when the King of Scotland at the time James I 6 also became the king of England at the same time as John the a century later Scotland and England were formly unified politically into a single Kingdom through the acts of Union in 1707 that established the modern United Kingdom as we still know it today though Scotland continued to maintain its own separate Regional identity and culture all throughout the centuries the modern movement for Scottish independence from the UK began to gain momentum in the late 20th century and by 1999 the UK government allowed for the establish ment of a devolved Scottish Parliament that came under the governing authority of the pro-independence Scottish national party or SNP by 2007 and then by 2011 the SNP had won the outright majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament which the British government agreed to legally grant them three years later in 2014 in the Scotland wide referendum that took place that year voters were asked Point Blank should Scotland be an independent country the previous months and years worth of intense campaigning from both the remain and leave sides of the question led to a significant 84.6% voter turnout in Scotland that saw more than 3.6 million Scots going to the polls and in the end after the votes had been counted and tallied the choice to remain with the UK was clear with 55.3% of Voters choosing to remain with the UK and rejecting Independence up against 44.7% of Voters who had answered the question with a yes and were in favor of Independence but then just 2 years later in 2016 the UK hosted a another referendum that this time the entire country participated in on whether or not the country should remain or withdraw from the European Union referred to as the brexit referendum it saw a total Nationwide voter turnout of 72.2% in which a slight majority of Voters 51.9% of them selected that the UK should withdraw from the European Union while 48.1% of Voters chose to remain in the EU the vote sent into motion the process of the UK formally withdrawing from the European Union which was completed 4 years later in 2020 but during the 2016 brexit vote not all parts of the UK voted equally England and Wales both largely voted to leave the EU while London Northern Ireland and Scotland all voted more largely to remain within Scotland voters were significantly more in favor of remaining with the EU than elsewhere in the country with 62% of Scottish voters in the referendum choosing to remain in the EU compared with only 38% who voted to leave one of the primary reasons that many Scottish voters had chosen to remain within the UK back in the previous 2014 referendum was at the time the perceived headache that would happen with Scotland leaving the UK and therefore leaving the EU as well which would have left Scotland outside of the EU and forced them to reapply to join back in which would have ended up taking an unknown amount of time to get themselves re-accepted but then after 2016 it became clear that the UK was leaving the EU anyway and dragging Scotland along with it which quickly led to frequent demands from the Scottish National Party On hosting a second referendum on Scottish independence since the material circumstances of the UK's position in the European Union had fundamentally changed Scotland's first Minister Nicholas sturgeon requested another Independence referendum from UK prime minister Boris Johnson in 2019 which was denied on the basis that the 2014 referendum was supposedly a once in a generation event then in January of 2021 sturgeon again claimed that a second Independence referendum would be held if the pro-independence parties won a majority of seats in that Year's Scottish parliamentary election which indeed ended up happening and so then in June of 2022 sturgeon proposed that a second Independence referendum would be held a year later in October of 2023 provided that the legality and constitutionality of the referendum was guaranteed so she again requested another referendum from the prime minister at the time Boris Johnson which was once again refused then in November of 2022 the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament doesn't have the legal Authority or the power to unilaterally call for another Independence referendum and so sturgeon's current stance is that the next upcoming UK general election in January of 2025 will serve as a deao referendum on Scotland's Independence anyway the legal route to Scotland holding another referendum on Independence anytime soon is now in seriously grave doubt while opinion pulling on the matter in Scotland has shown a recent Trend further towards favoring Independence after the Supreme Court's final judgment in November of 2022 the first five polls conducted showed that a slight majority of Scots were in favor of Independence ranging from between 51% and 56% in favor while a separate Nationwide poll showed that for the very first time a majority of all UK residents 55% of them Express support for the Scottish government being granted the right to hold a second referendum on Independence so again who really knows how this will all shape up in the future legally the path to Scotland's Independence currently seems pretty closed at this point but if opinion polling continues to suggest that a majority of Scots are in favor of Independence the British government may eventually not be able to ignore the demands of a second referendum forever but it can also always turn into a similar situation that's been going on in Spain for decades now with their own major separatist movements in Catalonia and the bass country the Catalin are a romance ethnic group who traditionally straddle the Eastern Mediterranean shore of the Iberian Peninsula the Catalin Trace their history in the region back centuries while their language Catalan is a romance language but one that is distinct different from the neighboring Spanish or French in the modern day region of Catalonia and Northeastern Spain roughly 37.6% of the population today are native speakers of Catalan over Spanish which has about 3 million people there however the modern independence movement in Catalonia can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when a sense of separate Catalan nationalism began taking root they consider their identity as being distinctly separate from that of Spain in 1931 after the proclamation of the second Spanish Republic Catalonia was granted wide sweeping at autonomy and home rule within Spain with its own local Parliament and even its own separate elected president but then after the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 ended with a victory for the Nationalist side and the establishment of an authoritarian dictatorship under General Francisco Franco Catalonia's previous and brief era of autonomy was completely crushed and reversed the Catalan language was completely banned and repressed as the francoist regime attempted to enforce a unified Spanish culture and language across the entire country Franco as Spain continue to exist until Franco himself died decades later in 1975 which finally allowed Catalan culture and political parties to begin reemerging and advocating for the restoration of their autonomy once again with the restoration of democracy in Spain in 1977 Catalonia received a new statute of autonomy from the Spanish government in 1979 and then decades later in 2006 when a socialist government was in power in Madrid that was more sympathetic to Cataline rights a referendum in Catalonia was allowed to be held that would span the Region's political and cultural autonomy even further with a brand new statute that was approved of by voters and then by both the Catalan and Spanish governments but then just 4 years later after that in 2010 the Spanish constitutional Court ruled on the new autonomy law and effectively gutted it rewriting 14 of the laws articles and dictating the interpretation for 27 additional articles this was the event that triggered huge protests all across Catalonia that included a March in Barcelona of more than a million people strong and as time went on from there the angry calls within Catalonia gradually shifted from increased autonomy to outright independence by 2012 a poll released by the center for opinion studies run by the Catalan government showed that support for Catalonia's Independence within the territory had risen to an unprecedented level of 57% and then the UK agreeed to Grant Scotland the legal right to host their own independence referendum added further fuel to the fire parties across the political Spectrum in Catalonia formed a Coalition calling for the Region's Independence the Catalan government demanded a formal Independence referendum be granted to them which the Spanish government simply refused to allow nonetheless in spite of the Spanish government's refusal to allow a legal referendum to take place the Catalan political authorities organized an illegal referendum anyway in 2017 that generated an incredible amount of controversy and drama before the referendum was even held on the 1st of October of that year the Spanish government and constitutional Court declared the ref referendum to be unconstitutional and illegal a few weeks beforehand while the Spanish police began a widescale Crackdown of the referendum in polling stations all across Catalonia leaning up to the vote and after it which included physical assaults on voters and seized ballots anti-independence parties in Catalonia declared a boycott of the vote and so when the referendum was finally held on the 1st of October 2017 voter turnout came in very low at only 43% of registered voters still 92% of those voters repres representing more than 2 million people or about 38% of all of Catalonia's registered voters still chose yes on the referendum to secede from Spain and form an independent Catalonia within weeks the Catalin government issued its formal declaration of independence from Spain which prompted the Spanish government to respond with the nuclear option the Spanish Senate voted to seize control of Catalin government institutions while Spain's prime minister used his executive powers to dismiss Catalonia's president Carlos Pont and his entire ire cabinet while fresh elections in Catalonia were called up to happen 2 months later the Spanish police raided the offices of Catalonia's government leaders and arrested many on unprecedented charges of rebellion while the former catalonian president fled into exile for Belgium most of the leaders were later pardoned in 2021 but Catalonia's 2017 attempt to secede from the country was resoundingly crushed by the Spanish authorities nonetheless support within Catalonia for at least a legally recognized Independence referendum continues to appear very high an April 2023 poll suggested that 77% of respondents in Catalonia at least supported being granted the right to hold a legally recognized referendum well only about 43% of the respondents in the same poll said that they still favored an independent status for Catalonia one of the biggest reasons that the Spanish authorities are so opposed to the idea of Catalan Independence is that if they happen to Grant it it might end up opening up a Pandora's box of potential possibilities and open up the CH for more of Spain's ethnic and linguistic minorities to demand their own independences next besides the catalans the bks have been the most historically independent-minded group of people in Spain and they would be the most likely ones to demand their own independence next the concept of the Bas country extends across the borders of Spain and France along the western edge of their border where about 3 million Basque people live today the vast majority of whom all live on the Spanish side the indigenous language that is spoken by The Basque people is highly unique in the context of Europe at Large The Basque language is the sole surviving paleo European language on the continent that remains indigenously spoken today and it predates the arrival of any of the Indo European languages that came during the Bronze Age as a result The Basque language is classified as a very rare language isolate remaining linguistically unrelated to any other known language still spoken on the planet roughly 28.4% of the people in the Bas country speak The Basque language natively today which is about 750,000 people 700,000 of whom live in Spain in a concentrated Arc across the Spanish Northeast Coast with the Atlantic near the border with France and just like with the Catalin language The Basque language was also banned and harshly repressed within Spain during the francoist era and influenced by National Liberation events that were going on elsewhere at the time of the early 1960s in the context of decolonization a militant Basque separatist organization known as ETA formed in 1959 with the explicit goal of using violence to secure the independence of a Bas State this was the beginning of the Basque conflict a half a century of violence between ETA and the Spanish state that would last all the way up until 2011 during that time more than a thousand people several hundred of whom were civilians were killed as a result of the violence that included bombings and assassinations while more than 22,000 others were injured and what has sometimes been described as the longest Modern War fought in Western Europe a war that continued for decades longer even after Franco died and the the Bas country was granted widescale autonomy along with Catalonia in 1979 Eda was classified as a terrorist organization by Spain France the UK US and the European Union but then after Decades of violence Eda finally announced an end to their armed struggle against the Spanish state only in 2011 and they eventually fully disbanded themselves altogether just in 2018 The Mask region of Spain is these days generally considered to have the highest degree of autonomy of any non-state actor in the European Union were there even allowed to collect and keep their own taxes and while an independence referendum has never been hosted in the Bas country by Spain before the support for holding one among the Bas appears to remain fairly strong polling in the Spanish Basque country has shown a steady increase in the desire for Basque Independence that's generally followed along with the same Modern Trend that's been seen in Catalonia a 2010 poll from the University of the Bas country found that only 30% of Bas supported independence at the time compared to 55% who were against it but then another poll they conducted 4 years later in 2014 showed that support had shifted towards 34% who were in favor of Independence up against 52% who are opposed to it while polling since 2020 has shown significantly more support for Independence than before the first nazio meta National barometer poll which seeks to regularly measure the feelings on Independence in the Bas country took place in 2020 and it found that 42.5% of respondents were in favor of Independence up against 31.5% who were opposed to it then the second nazio matoa poll in March of 2021 showed 39.5% in favor of Independence up against 29.5% opposed to it and then the most recent third nazio Metro poll conducted in November of 2021 showed that 40.5% of respondents were in favor of Independence compared with just 29.2% who were opposed to it so who knows maybe like Catalonia if the desire for Independence within the bass country continues growing and eventually gets too large for the Spanish government to Simply ignore a referendum may eventually be granted and if Catalonia ever manages its independence first it's probably a certainty that the basks won't be far behind them next I think that at least at this rate the odds of Scotland Catalonia or The Basque Country one day becoming independent are greater than the biggest historical separatist movement over in the Western Hemisphere ever succeeding Quebec Quebec has always been a unique province in Canada being the only one with a predominantly french-speaking majority in culture KC's population today is roughly 9 million people and the province's sole official language is French and specifically not English as of the most recent 2021 Canadian census French is the native language of more than 78% of Quebec's population while roughly 94% of the province's population speaks French fluently compared to only 8% of the population who lists English as their native language and only 52% of the population who consider themselves even fluent in English which is AB on the same level of English proficiency as Greece Quebec has therefore always been an isolated bubble of the French language in the America surrounded on all of its sides by English speakers which has always contributed to a certain feeling of separateness and nationalism within Quebec that has never really gone away the peak of Quebec nationalism happened in the 1980s and 1990s though when the province hosted two referendums on their independence from Canada the first one came in 1980 which saw a significant 85.6% voter turnout that saw the remain with Canada side win handedly with a total of 59.6% of the vote compared to the leave side that only managed to secure 40.4% of the vote but then 15 years later came Quebec's second and much more controversial and closer Independence referendum in 1995 this time the second Independence referendum became a massive spectacle in Quebec that saw the active participation and input of virtually everybody in the province the second referendum secured what has remained the largest voter turnout in all of Quebec's entire history with a whopping 93.5% % of registered voters in the province taking part in the decision and the final vote was razor thin the remain with Canada side just narrowly won in 1995 with just 50.6% of the total vote compared with 49.4% of Voters who chose to leave and make Quebec an independent country the difference between the remain and leave sides was merely 54,2 188 votes out of a total population of registered voters in Quebec at the time of 5, 87 ,000 meaning that just 1% of the population carried the entire political future of Quebec at the time but ever since the narrow failure of the Quebec nationalist to secure the province's independence in 1995 the support for further separatism in Quebec appears to have gradually dwindled away but has still never completely gone away altogether a recent poll from leir a French language newspaper in Montreal was conducted in 2023 that found that current support for Quebec separatism stands at just 38% of the Vin's population a far cry from the more than 49% who voted for Independence back in 1995 but the data from that poll suggests something even more alarming to the pro-independence side in Quebec most of the support for Quebec separatism remaining comes from older people 55 years and over while support for Quebec separatism among the younger Generations in the province is significantly lower this likely means that as the years continue passing on support for kbec separatism while still kind of substantial today will continue dwindling away simply due to the attrition of the older cohort that more strongly supports Independence dying off and the younger Generations replacing them who more strongly oppose Independence and from here on just about every other possible Independence Movement remaining in the world it could happen gets pretty speculative if it hasn't been enough already for example it's possible that an independent Kurdish State could one day coales in the center of the Middle East the Kurds are their own ethnic group who number somewhere between 30 and 45 million people in the area and span across the modern borders of turkey Syria Iraq and Iran the governments of which have always been opposed to the emergence of an independent Kurdish State for the simple reason that if the Kurds ever emerged independent in one of them they would likely work together to take over the territory of all the others as well the Kurdish inhabited lands also include the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Rich oil fields in the lands they inhabit in Iraq which together would almost certainly mean that any unified independent Kurdish state would become a major geopolitical power that everyone else in the region would then have to reckon with as a result the Kurds are generally considered to be among the largest stateless people in the modern 21st century world the Iraqi Kurds have however accomplished their own political autonomy within Iraq ever since 1992 after the US began enforcing a no-fly zone over their territory that allowed them to achieve the leverage they needed against the Iraqi central government in Baghdad to secure it which established the autonomous Kurdistan Regional government krg in Northern Iraq much later on in 2017 the krg decided to host a unilateral referendum on their independence from Iraq that much like the unilateral Catalonia Independence referendum was deemed illegal by the Iraqi central government in Baghdad nonetheless the krg went ahead with the 2017 Independence referendum anyway that saw a pretty large 72.2% voter turnout that resulted in a completely overwhelming vote of 92.7% in favor of the krg's independent dependence up against only 7.3% of Voters who chose to remain with Iraq however the Iraqi government refused to recognize the results of the referendum declared it illegal and then launched a full-blown military offensive into the kg's territory in retaliation the Iraqi Army then overran roughly 20% of the krg's administered territory and killed hundreds of people in the process which forced the krg into conceding and cancelling the results of the referendum at the same time the Syrian Kurds have also achieved their own deao om through Force since the Syrian Civil War began next door but unlike the Iraqi herds they have always stopped just short of asserting their own independence from Syria officially only claiming their own autonomous status within Syria which the Assad regime in Syria still doesn't even recognize as legitimate if the Syrian Kurds ever took things a step further and declared their own independence like the Iraqi Kurds attempted to do in 2017 or which Turkish kurd separatist factions like the pkk have been attempting to also do for decades then then it would almost certainly trigger at least an immediate Turkish Invasion or intervention to stop them from doing so since turkey would then fear that if they succeeded they would use their own independence to ferment unrest in the Kurdish inhabited area of Southeastern turkey and so since the Turkish Syrian and Iraqi governments would and have opposed any and all moves towards formal Kurdish Independence it's a development that's not exceptionally likely to happen anytime soon and similar to the Kurds there's also the potential no matter how slim for an independent state for the targ people in Northern Africa to eventually emerge through Force as well the tar eggs are a large nomadic Berber ethnic group numbering around 4 million people whose territory spans across the modern borders of Mali ner Libya and Algeria since 1916 there have been at least five major targ rebellions in this area demanding the creation of their own independent state and the most successful of all of them was the most recent one that happened in 2012 back then tarag Rebels managed to overrun the entirety of Northern Mali including mali's most populated Northern cities timbuk 2 and GA the tarag rebels then seize the moment to unilaterally declare the independence of a state that they called azawad in April of 2012 a state that they envisioned as becoming the Homeland for the targ people that Encompass roughly 60% of mali's internationally recognized territory but then shortly afterwards islamist factions within azawad including Al-Qaeda effectively co-opted the movement for themselves and then decided to expand their Ambitions by launching Invasion into the rest of Mali to try and take over the entire country which then prompted a huge French military intervention against them that rapidly saw French forces recapture all of mali's territory and Destroy azawad about as soon as it appeared without any other country ever offering aaad any form of diplomatic recognition then in February of 2013 with all of its territory lost the targs formally renounced their prior claim of Independence for azawad and asked Molly to begin reincorporating them back into the country but in recent years the azawad movement has witnessed a bit of a comeback again Molly experienced back-to-back cou d'as in 2020 and 2021 that brought a new anti-french military hun into power in the country that decided to expel all French troops from the country by 2022 and they began welcoming in Russian troops from the Vagner group to assist them against rebels in the country instead in the ensuing chaos that followed the azawad movement has regain significant momentum and ground and currently as of 2024 it controls a large swath of mol's North once again if they're able to expand on their success and take back control over major towns in the area like timbuk 2 and GA again it could only be a matter of time before azawad unilaterally redeclared their own independence in Northern Mali again and the question this time will be if anybody intervenes to stop them again or if anybody will decide to just simply recognize them this time meanwhile in Cameroon Down in subsaharan Africa there are the potential conditions emerging for yet another possible new candidate country toer in the near future as well this time in the form of a potential new country known as ambz Amazonia in cameroon's extreme West the issue here dates back to the Colonial period where for decades between 1916 and 1961 modern day Cameroon was divided between a larger French colony in the East and a smaller British colony in the west who directly influen the pattern of cameroon's two dominant languages today French and English French has naturally remained the dominant language spoken in the bigger part of Cameroon that used to be a French colony and 41% of the country's total population currently speaks French meanwhile English has remained the dominant spoken language in the smaller part of Cameroon that used to be a British colony and so about 16% of cameroon's overall population speaks English this has led to a long-standing issue within Cameroon ever since the country's Independence that's known as the anglophone problem where the english- speaking minority in Far Western Cameroon has often felt disenfranchised and locked out by certain policies and actions enacted by the majority french-speaking cameroonian government in 2016 widescale protest in the smaller anglophone part of Cameroon broke out that the mostly french-speaking cameroonian government decided to violently crack down on which led the angones in Western Cameroon deciding to launch a separatist Insurgency which eventually led to a group of angones to unilaterally declare the independence of the western angone region of Cameroon as the independent state of ambazonia this led the cameroonian government to openly declare war on the ambazonian separatists and the cameroonian Army was ordered in to restore the government's Authority which sparked the cameroonian Civil War or the anglophone crisis in the country that has continued on ever since thousands of people have been killed by the conflict since then and hundreds of thousands more have been forcefully displaced and as it currently stands the cameronian government controls most of the large cities and population centers in the angone region while the ambazonian separatists still control large swaths of the area's rural Countryside if they are eventually successful in their Rebellion then the ambazonian separatists will almost certainly attempt to gain formal recognition of their independence as Africa's newest State like South Sudan and Eritrea became before them through fours but they still might not become the world's newest country that emerges through Force of Arms in Yemen the long Civil War in the country is reaching its 10-year anniversary of beginning with no immediate end still in sight but as it currently stands now as it has for many years there were three major factions in the war that could eventually negotiate for peace the iran-backed houthi and the Saudi backed Republic of Yemen are decidedly not separatist entities they both want full political control over the entirety of Yemen's internationally recognized territory and they both officially claim to be all of Yemen's rightful and legitimate government meanwhile the third major faction in the war the UAE backed Southern transitional council is explicitly a secessionist faction that seeks for the reestablishment and Independence of the former South Yemen again just like it used to exist for decades in the 20th century between 1967 and 1990 before it was absorbed into the former North Yemen that created the unified Yemen that existed up until the Civil War began in 2014 if the southern transitional council is successful in its desires and negotiations whenever a formal peace settlement is made in Yemen then it's very possible we could end up seeing the geopolitical return of South Yemen to the World's Maps again and a return back to the era of a politically divided Yemen which is more of the historical reversion to the mean in the area when you consider that Yemen has been politically divided between between a north and a South for centuries and its recent Union between 1990 and 2014 was a pretty major aberration in this otherwise long history of divided rule countries might come and go on the international stage all the time but pretty much all countries have governments that want to track their citizens activities and restrict their citizens access to certain websites apps and entertainment options and that's where this video sponsor nordvpn comes into play for example I was recently doing some traveling in Spain and before I went I never even comprehended the fact that hundreds of American news websites are effectively blocked in the European Union now because of a series of EU internet 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Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 1,300,258

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: IUhYoLSlYQ0

Length: 53min 18sec (3198 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024