Palau

Palau is an island country of about 340 islands in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the western Pacific Ocean, forming the western part of the Caroline Islands and covering 466 square kilometers, the sixteenth-smallest country in the world, with maritime boundaries toward the Federated States of Micronesia to the east, Indonesia to the south and the Philippines to the northwest. Ngerulmud, on Babeldaob Island, is the capital, while Koror is the most populous city; the 2025 population was estimated at 17,663. Settlement began around 1,000 BC; Spain ruled from 1885, Germany from 1899 to 1914, and Japan governed Palau as a League of Nations mandate after the First World War, before the United States administered it under the postwar Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands from 1947. Palau became fully independent in 1994 through a Compact of Free Association with the United States, and is today a presidential republic in free association with the United States, led by President Surangel Whipps Jr. and Vice President Raynold Oilouch under a bicameral legislature of a Senate and House of Delegates. Its economy rests on tourism, subsistence agriculture and fishing, it uses the United States dollar as currency, and Palauan and English are its official languages.