Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands is an archipelagic country in the Micronesia region of the northwestern Pacific Ocean, situated west of the International Date Line and north of the equator, with maritime boundaries toward Wake Island to the north, Kiribati to the southeast, Nauru to the south and the Federated States of Micronesia to the west, comprising 29 coral atolls, five main islands and about 1,220 smaller islands divided into the Ratak chain to the east and the Ralik chain to the west, with a total land area of 181.43 square kilometers, though 98.47 percent of its territory is lagoon waters, the largest such proportion of any sovereign state. Majuro, home to roughly half the country's population, is the capital and largest city of a nation whose 2024 population was estimated at 37,548. Austronesian settlers arrived as early as the second millennium BC; Spanish explorers first visited in 1526, the German Empire annexed the islands in 1885, Japan occupied them during the First World War, and the United States administered them after the Second World War, with the Marshall Islands achieving self-government on 1 May 1979 and full sovereignty through a Compact of Free Association with the United States in 1986, joining the United Nations in 1991. The Marshall Islands is a unitary parliamentary republic with an executive president, currently Hilda Heine, uses the United States dollar as currency, and maintains close defense and financial ties with the United States.