ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-lettercountry codes defined inISO 3166-1, part of theISO 3166 standard published by theInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO), to representcountries,dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. They allow a better visual association between the codes and the country names than the two-letteralpha-2 codes (the third set of codes isnumeric and hence offers no visual association).[1] They were first included as part of the ISO 3166 standard in its first edition in 1974.
TheUnited Nations uses a combination of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and alpha-3 codes, along with codes that pre-date the creation of ISO 3166, forinternational vehicle registration codes, which are codes used to identify the issuing country of a vehicle registration plate; some of these codes are currentlyindeterminately reserved in ISO 3166-1.[3]
The following is a complete list of the current officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes,[4] using atitle case version of the English short names officially defined by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA):
User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories, or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use these codes in the updating process of the standard. The following alpha-3 codes can be user-assigned:AAA toAAZ,QMA toQZZ,XAA toXZZ, andZZA toZZZ.[5]
XXC is used to represent a refugee, other than as defined above
XXX is used to represent a person of unspecified nationality
NATO STANAG 1059 INT is built upon ISO alpha-3 codes, but also defines alpha-2 codes incompatible with ISO 3166-1. It introduces several private use codes for fictional countries and organizational entities:
Reserved code elements are codes which have become obsolete, or are required in order to enable a particular user application of the standard but do not qualify for inclusion in ISO 3166-1. To avoid transitional application problems and to aid users who require specific additional code elements for the functioning of their coding systems, the ISO 3166/MA, when justified, reserves these codes which it undertakes not to use for other than specified purposes during a limited or indeterminate period of time.
Exceptionally reserved code elements are codes reserved at the request of national ISO member bodies, governments and international organizations, which are required in order to support a particular application, as specified by the requesting body and limited to such use; any further use of such code elements is subject to approval by the ISO 3166/MA. The following alpha-3 codes are currently exceptionally reserved:
Transitional reserved code elements are codes reserved after their deletion from ISO 3166-1. These codes may be used only during a transitional period of at least five years while new code elements that may have replaced them are taken into use. These codes may be reassigned by the ISO 3166/MA after the expiration of the transitional period. The following alpha-3 codes are currently transitionally reserved:
Indeterminately reserved code elements are reserved for use in a particular way, usually due to their presence in other coding systems. For example, several codes are reserved because they are used for internationalintellectual property organizations inWIPO Standard ST.3.
UNO is used to designate theUN Organization as the issuer and used as a substitute for nationality where the holder is an Official of the UN Organization
^ISO International Organization for Standardization, ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (1 February 2002)."RE: Change of alpha-3 Code Element"(PDF).ISO 3166-1 NEWSLETTER No. V-3. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2011-07-22. Retrieved26 June 2017.Description of change: Change of the alpha-3 Code element for Romania from ROM to ROU following a request of the Government of Romania.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Reserved code elements under ISO 3166-1 "Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes", available on request from ISO 3166/MA
