The successful 6th NomadMania Conference in Ouro Preto is now history, but the discussions and decisions reached there will result in key changes to what was the subject of the Conference: the UN+ list.
Purpose of UN+
The UN+ list was devised to be NomadMania’s way of identifying politically special areas that are not defined as sovereign countries but are important to be distinguished from regions. Places like Gibraltar, Hong Kong or New Caledonia immediately stand out in the travel community – nobody considers them independent countries, but they have their own flag, their own governance, in certain cases their own currencies and laws and are all geographically defined as separate to their ‘mother’ country. Having a useful guide of which elements fit here would be useful.
At the same time, ‘traditional’ divisions such as ISO-3166 are not helpful because, by being ‘official’ they obscure the existence of some ‘de facto’ places who are very much politically independent, but are not accepted as such by (most of) the international community. Examples here are Abkhazia or Somaliland and other would-be independent places.
It has been clear to us that, being NomadMania, creating our own authoritative list is the way to go in this case.
The use of the term UN
In Ouro Preto, many delegates noted that any reference to the UN is confusing if we are talking about a list which, in fact, sometimes goes against the UN status, and at the same time clearly expands on the notion of countries.
A first vote taken and a majority vote was to clearly define the UN list in terms of 193 – the full members of the United Nations.
There was an expanded consensus on this and it means that places sometimes considered when travellers celebrate country-counting, such as Kosovo or the Vatican, will not be included in the UN from now on, and this will have consequences for some of our mapping decisions and even some of our further lists (such as SLOW or YES, for example).
Let us reiterate that in no way is this a political decision, and NomadMania is only concerned with dividing the world in a way that makes sense to the NomadMania community, which spoke clearly at our Conference.
ATLAS
Following a number of exciting and even controversial proposals for possible new names, the winner of the vote at Ouro Preto was ATLAS which stands for ‘Additional Territories, Lands and States.’ This name, in fact, totally encapsulates the general idea of what we want this ‘further list’ to represent.
Further votes were taken on a number of issues, two of which we will mention here. The delegates decided that only inhabited places can be considered for the ATLAS list. Therefore, territories without a permanent population will not be considered. Nevertheless, a different vote deemed that Antarctica as a continent should remain on the list despite being uninhabited, given its general importance to the travel community.
Other votes gave a general direction of work, but there is still a lot to be done to create the final new ATLAS list.
What to expect next
An ATLAS Committee has been developed by Conference participants who were happy to volunteer. Headed by traveller and winner of our last Against All Odds award Daniel Riley, this team will also include avid conference participant Julianna Satterly, UN Master Kari Karanko, Series Committee member Stephen Nemeth, Executive Committee member Ed Hotchkiss and one of the most active travellers by number of visited regions in recent years according to our statistics, Alex Trach.
The ATLAS Committee will deliberate extensively on what specific places the new ATLAS should include. We expect that, following their work, a new ATLAS list will be launched and separately mapped. We hope to have this project completed by the end of the summer.
So, stay tuned for a new, updated list for the traveller who needs direction in terms of ‘where to go now’ beyond countries.
