Vanuatu

Vanuatu is an archipelagic country in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean, its roughly 83 volcanic islands spanning about 1,300 kilometers north to south some 1,750 kilometers east of northern Australia and 540 kilometers northeast of New Caledonia, and covering roughly 12,274 square kilometers. Port Vila, on the island of Efate, is the capital of a country whose 2023 population was estimated at about 335,908. Melanesian peoples first settled the islands roughly 3,000 years ago; the Portuguese-employed explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queiros arrived in 1606 and claimed the territory for Spain, and in 1906 Britain and France established the joint Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which governed the islands until independence on 30 July 1980 under Prime Minister Walter Lini, when the country adopted the name Vanuatu, from Austronesian words meaning land that stands alone. Vanuatu is a unitary parliamentary republic with a ceremonial president and a prime minister heading the government, and has belonged to the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and other international organizations since independence.