Kiribati

Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an archipelagic country spanning the Micronesia and Polynesia sub-regions of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean, comprising 32 atolls and the raised coral island of Banaba across a total land area of 811 square kilometers dispersed over more than 3.4 million square kilometers of ocean straddling the equator and the International Date Line, with a permanent population just over 138,000 as of the 2026 census, more than half living on Tarawa, its capital. The Gilbert Islands were politically autonomous until annexed as a British protectorate in 1892, a status that ended in 1979 when Kiribati, comprising the Gilbert, Phoenix and Line islands along with Banaba, gained independence and became a sovereign state; the country formerly exported phosphate mined on Banaba, whose descendants mostly live in exile on Rabi in Fiji though represented in the Kiribati Parliament, but the mine is now exhausted. Fisheries, subsistence agriculture and copra exports drive the economy, particularly on outer islands, and the government relies heavily on foreign fishing license fees and international aid; Kiribati became a full United Nations member in 1999 and belongs to the Pacific Community and the Commonwealth of Nations. As a low-lying atoll nation, Kiribati is acutely vulnerable to sea-level rise and climate change, a central concern of its foreign policy as a member of the Alliance of Small Island States.