The club of countries (and its exclusive admission policy)

To understand why a country is not recognized, we first need to understand what a country is—at least in theory. The 1933 Montevideo Convention is the classic reference point. It sets out four criteria for statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

It sounds quite simple, doesn’t it? The problem is that the fourth criterion, the ‘capacity to enter into relations with other states,’ has been interpreted in practice as the need to be recognized by other countries. This is where geopolitics, history, and economic interests brutally complicate the picture. Being recognized is not an exam you pass with a checklist. It is more like being accepted into the world’s most exclusive and capricious club. Membership depends on who your friends are, who your enemies are, and above all, on not upsetting the most powerful members of the club.

Taiwan: The ignored giant

If there is an example that embodies the irony and complexity of unrecognized states, it is Taiwan. Taiwan has one of the world’s most advanced economies, is a global leader in semiconductor manufacturing, and has a vibrant democratic system.

In the semiconductor industry, Taiwan is not just an important player; it is the dominant one. The island manufactures more than 60% of the world’s semiconductor chips and, even more crucially, holds approximately 90% of the production capacity for the most advanced chips.

A single company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), controls more than 67% of the global foundry market for semiconductors by itself. To put it in perspective, European commissioner Thierry Breton warned that if Taiwan stopped exporting, ‘almost all factories in the world would shut down within three weeks’ \. Despite this, Taiwan is recognized by only a handful of countries, and that number has been dwindling. The reason is simple and has a name: the People's Republic of China. This republic emerged from the Chinese Civil War, a conflict that, between 1927 and 1949, pitted the Nationalist Party against the Chinese Communist Party for control of the country.

The communists, led by Mao Zedong, defeated the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, and on October 1, 1949, proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. The nationalist government then retreated to the island of Taiwan, where it established the Republic of China. Since then, Beijing has maintained the ‘One China’ policy, considering Taiwan a rebellious province that must be reunified, by force if necessary.

Any country that wishes to have diplomatic and commercial relations with the economic giant that is China must therefore break official relations with Taiwan. The result is an absurd situation in which most nations of the world, although they maintain solid economic and cultural ties with Taiwan, officially pretend that it does not exist as a sovereign country.

Kosovo: independence in the shadow of war

To understand Kosovo, you need to know its location: the Balkans, a peninsula in southeastern Europe historically known as 'the powder keg of Europe' for being an explosive mosaic of ethnicities, religions, and empires in constant conflict.

The history of this region is a layered superposition. The initial foundation was laid by the Roman Empire, but after its division in 395 AD, the area came under the control of its eastern half: the Byzantine Empire. It was during this period, around the 7th century, that the Serbs, a Slavic people, settled in the region and adopted Orthodox Christianity. In the 14th century, the arrival of a new power changed everything: the Ottoman Empire, of Muslim faith. One date becomes fundamental here: 1389, the year of the Battle of Kosovo. For the Serbs, this battle became the central event of their national identity, a heroic defeat that cemented their narrative as defenders of Christianity. During the more than four hundred years of Ottoman rule, a key demographic and religious change occurred. While the Serbs clung to their Orthodox faith, an important part of the population of Albanian origin gradually converted to Islam. The result was the consolidation of two peoples, Christian Serbs and Muslim Albanians, claiming the same territory as the heart of their identity.

Already in the 20th century, a radical solution was attempted for this historical chaos: creating a single country called Yugoslavia. The idea was to forcibly unite all these peoples—Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Albanians, and more—in a single socialist state. The architect and guarantor of this fragile unity was a charismatic and authoritarian leader: Marshal Tito. With an iron fist, Tito suppressed nationalisms. That is, he silenced the deep ethnic and religious rivalries, forcing everyone to coexist under a common Yugoslav identity.

But this peace was artificial. After Tito's death in 1980 and the subsequent fall of communism in Europe, the glue that held the country together disappeared completely. Old tensions, suppressed for decades, exploded with devastating violence. The result was the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the brutal wars of the 1990s, a conflict that once again put 'the powder keg of Europe' at the center of world attention.

Kosovo was technically a Serbian province within Yugoslavia, but its population was (and is) overwhelmingly Albanian, with culture and language distinct from the Serbs. After a bloody war in the late 1990s and years of UN administration, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.

The United States and most European countries immediately recognized Kosovo. However, Serbia—backed by Russia and China—rejects its independence, considering it historic Serbian territory. This deadlock keeps Kosovo in a precarious position. Currently, Serbia has a population of approximately 6.6 million inhabitants, while Kosovo's population is around 1.6 million. Although more than 100 countries recognize it, the lack of universal recognition and the Russian veto in the Security Council prevent it from joining the UN and other key organizations, limiting its access to international financing and its full participation in the global community.

Somaliland: Peace and stability in chaos

In the Horn of Africa, a region that for the rest of the world is synonymous with geopolitical instability, droughts, piracy, and endless conflicts, we find an even more particular case: Somaliland. Its history is a paradox that defies all logic.

In January 1991, the Somali dictator Siad Barre fled the capital, Mogadishu, forced by the advance of rebel clans. His overthrow, far from bringing peace, created a power vacuum that collapsed the entire country into a whirlwind of civil war. What followed in the south, with its capital in Mogadishu, was a descent into hell: warlords, famine, and a failed international intervention that the world remembers as 'Black Hawk Down.' Somalia became the archetype of a failed state.

But while the south burned, the north, a former British colony that had voluntarily joined Italian Somalia in 1960 to form the new nation, took a radically different path. Based on their own clan structures and traditions, they convened peace conferences, disarmed militias, and built, from scratch, an oasis of order. In 1991, they declared the restoration of their independence.

Somaliland has its own currency, its own army, has held multiparty democratic elections (generally considered free and fair), and maintains a peace that is the envy of the region. However, despite its functional success and de facto compliance with all the criteria of a state, no country in the world recognizes Somaliland as a sovereign nation.

The main reason is a sacred, yet deeply problematic, principle of African politics: the sanctity of borders inherited from colonialism. In the late 19th century, European powers divided Africa like a cake, drawing borders with rulers and pencils without regard for ethnic, cultural, or geographic realities, splitting groups in half and uniting historical rivals.

When African countries achieved their independence in the 20th century, the newly formed Organization of African Unity (now African Union) made a pragmatic decision: to respect those artificial borders at all costs. The fear was that if a single country succeeded in redrawing its map, it would unleash a domino effect of secessionist wars that would consume the continent. It was a bet on stability, even if it was forced and often unjust stability.

Life in limbo

What does it mean in practice to live in a country that officially does not exist? It means facing endless obstacles. From the impossibility of obtaining loans from international financial institutions, to the difficulty of traveling, since passports from these territories are not accepted in many places. Companies from these states have difficulty trading internationally, and their athletes cannot compete under their own flag at the Olympic Games. It is an existence that requires an enormous dose of resilience and ingenuity from its citizens. The story of unrecognized states is, ultimately, the story of the struggle for identity and sovereignty in a world that prefers clear labels and well-defined boxes. It teaches us that a country is much more than a seat at the UN; it is a community of people who, against all odds, affirm their right to exist, even when the rest of the world looks the other way.