Tuvalu in the context of Pacific Ocean

A microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a very small population or land area, usually both. However, the meanings of "state" and "very small" are not well-defined in international law. Some recent attempts to define microstates have focused on identifying qualitative features that are linked to their size and population, such as partial delegation of their sovereignty to larger states, such as for international defense.

Commonly accepted examples of microstates include five historic European microstates: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City. Malta and Luxembourg are sometimes included in that list but are generally considered too populous to be genuine microstates. Other examples are small, isolated island states in the Pacific Ocean: Nauru, Palau, Niue, Cook Islands and Tuvalu. Some small Caribbean countries such as Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines may be considered microstates by some but are often not included due to them being grouped together as small island countries. Singapore and Bahrain are sometimes considered microstates but some argue are too populous, self reliant or powerful to be considered true microstates and their island status can play an important factor too.The smallest political entity recognized as a sovereign state is Vatican City, with fewer than 1,000 residents and an area of only 49 hectares (120 acres). Some microstates – such as Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City – are city-states consisting of a single municipality.

Oceania (UK: /ˌoʊsiˈɑːniə, ˌoʊʃi-, -ˈeɪn-/ OH-s(h)ee-AH-nee-ə, -⁠AY-, US: /ˌoʊʃiˈæniə, -ˈɑːn-/ OH-shee-A(H)N-ee-ə) is a geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Mainland Australia is regarded as its continental landmass. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 46.3 million as of 2024. Oceania is the smallest continent in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica.

Oceania has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia, French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, which rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index, to the much less developed economies of Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Western New Guinea. The largest and most populous country in Oceania is Australia, and the largest city is Sydney. Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 m (16,024 ft).

The House of Windsor is the current royal house of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. The house's name was inspired by the historic Windsor Castle estate. The house was founded on 17 July 1917, when King George V changed the name of the royal house from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor due to anti-German sentiment during the First World War. There have been five British monarchs of the House of Windsor: George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II, and Charles III. The children and male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, also genealogically belong to the House of Oldenburg since Philip was by birth a member of the Glücksburg branch of that house.

The monarch is head of state of fifteen sovereign states. These are the United Kingdom, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu. As well as these separate monarchies, there are also three Crown Dependencies, fourteen British Overseas Territories, two associated states of New Zealand, and one territory.

A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state in the Commonwealth of Nations that has the same constitutional monarch and head of state as the other realms. The current monarch is King Charles III. Except for the United Kingdom, in each of the realms the monarch is represented by a governor-general. The phrase Commonwealth realm is an informal description not used in any law.

As of 2025, there are 15 Commonwealth realms: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom. While the Commonwealth of Nations has 56 independent member states, only these 15 have Charles III as head of state. He is also Head of the Commonwealth, a non-constitutional role.

Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons, is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1,000 smaller islands in Melanesia, Oceania, to the north-east of the country of Australia. It is directly adjacent to the Autonomous Region of Bougainville to the west, Australia to the south-west, New Caledonia and Vanuatu to the south-east, Fiji, Tuvalu, and Wallis and Futuna to the east, and the Federated States of Micronesia and Nauru to the north. It has a total area of 28,896 square kilometres (11,157 sq mi), and a population of 734,887 according to the official estimates for mid-2023. Its capital and largest city, Honiara, is located on the largest island, Guadalcanal. The country takes its name from the wider area of the Solomon Islands archipelago, which is a collection of Melanesian islands that also includes the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (currently a part of Papua New Guinea), but excludes the Santa Cruz Islands.

The islands have been settled since at least some time between 30,000 and 28,800 BC, with later waves of migrants, notably the Lapita people, mixing and producing the modern indigenous Solomon Islanders population. In 1568, the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña was the first European to visit them. Though not named by Mendaña, it is believed that the islands were called "the Solomons" by those who later received word of his voyage and mapped his discovery. Mendaña returned decades later, in 1595, and another Spanish expedition, led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, visited the Solomons in 1606.

Tokelau (/ˈtoʊkəlaʊ/ ; lit. 'north-northeast' or 'north wind'; known previously as the Union Islands, and, until 1976, known officially as the Tokelau Islands) is a dependent territory of New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean. It consists of three tropical coral atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo. They have a combined land area of 10 km (4 sq mi). In addition to these three, Swains Island (Olohega), which forms part of the same archipelago, is the subject of an ongoing territorial dispute, while being currently administered by the United States as part of American Samoa. Tokelau lies north of the Samoan Islands, east of Tuvalu, south of the Phoenix Islands, southwest of the more distant Line Islands, and northwest of the Cook Islands.

Tokelau has a population of approximately 2,500 people; it has the fourth-smallest population of any sovereign state or dependency in the world. As of the 2016 census, around 45% of its residents had been born overseas, mostly in Samoa or New Zealand. The populace has a life expectancy of 69, which is comparable to that of other Oceanian island nations. Approximately 94% of the population speak Tokelauan as their first language. Tokelau has the smallest economy of any nation. It is a leader in renewable energy, being the first 100% solar-powered nation in the world.

Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono and Apolima), and several smaller, uninhabited islands, including the Aleipata Islands (Nuʻutele, Nuʻulua, Fanuatapu and Namua). Samoa is located 64 km (40 mi; 35 nmi) west of American Samoa, 889 km (552 mi; 480 nmi) northeast of Tonga, 1,152 km (716 mi; 622 nmi) northeast of Fiji, 483 km (300 mi; 261 nmi) east of Wallis and Futuna, 1,151 km (715 mi; 621 nmi) southeast of Tuvalu, 519 km (322 mi; 280 nmi) south of Tokelau, 4,190 km (2,600 mi; 2,260 nmi) southwest of Hawaii, and 610 km (380 mi; 330 nmi) northwest of Niue. The capital and largest city is Apia.

The Lapita people discovered and settled the Samoan Islands around 3,500 years ago. They developed a Samoan language and Samoan cultural identity. Because of the Samoans' seafaring skills, pre-20th-century European explorers referred to the entire island group, including American Samoa, as the "Navigator Islands". The country became a colony of the German Empire in 1899 after the Tripartite Convention, and was known as German Samoa. German administration ended in August 1914 after New Zealand troops bloodlessly occupied the colony at the start of World War I. New Zealand officially gained control of the region as a League of Nations mandate in 1920, when it became the Territory of Western Samoa. After being converted into a United Nations Trust Territory in 1946, Western Samoa gained independence on 1 January 1962 and changed its name to just Samoa on 4 July 1997.

Wallis and Futuna, officially the Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands (/ˈwɒlɪs ... fuːˈtuːnə/ ), is a French island collectivity in the South Pacific, situated between Tuvalu to the northwest, Fiji to the southwest, Tonga to the southeast, Samoa to the east, and Tokelau to the northeast.

Mata Utu is its capital and largest city. Wallis and Futuna is associated with the European Union as an overseas country and territory (OCT). The territory's land area is 142.42 km (54.99 sq mi). It had a population of 11,151 at the July 2023 census (down from 14,944 at the 2003 census). The territory is made up of three main volcanic tropical islands and a number of tiny islets. It is divided into two island groups that lie about 260 km (160 mi) apart: the Wallis Islands (also known as Uvea) in the northeast; and the Hoorn Islands (also known as the Futuna Islands) in the southwest, including Futuna Island proper and the mostly uninhabited Alofi Island.

Polynesians are an ethnolinguistic group comprising closely related ethnic groups native to Polynesia, which encompasses the islands within the Polynesian Triangle in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Southeast Asia and are part of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, with an Urheimat in Taiwan. They speak the Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic subfamily within the Austronesian language family. The Indigenous Māori people form the largest Polynesian population, followed by Samoans, Native Hawaiians, Tahitians, Tongans, and Cook Islands Māori.

As of 2012, there were an estimated 2 million ethnic Polynesians (both full and part) worldwide. The vast majority either inhabit independent Polynesian nation-states (Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu) or form minorities in countries such as Australia, Chile (Easter Island), New Zealand, France (French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna), and the United States (Hawaii and American Samoa), as well as in the British Overseas Territory of the Pitcairn Islands. New Zealand had the highest population of Polynesians, estimated at 110,000 in the 18th century.

These are lists of countries by foreign-born population (immigrants) and lists of countries by number of native-born persons living in a foreign country (emigrants).

According to the United Nations, in 2024 the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, France and the United Kingdom had the largest numbers of immigrants of any country, while Tuvalu, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, and Tokelau had the lowest. In terms of percentage of population, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait had the highest shares, while Cuba, Madagascar and China had the lowest.

In economics, the business sector or corporate sector - sometimes popularly called simply "business" - is "the part of the economy made up by companies". It is a subset of the domestic economy, excluding the economic activities of general government, private households, and non-profit organizations serving individuals. The business sector is part of the private sector, but it differs in that the private sector includes all non-government activity, including non-profit organizations, while the business sector only includes business.

In the United States, the business sector accounted for about 78 percent of the value of gross domestic product (GDP) as of 2000. Kuwait and Tuvalu each had business sectors accounting for less than 40% of GDP as of 2015.

The Australian dollar (sign: $; code: AUD; also abbreviated A$ or sometimes AU$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; and also referred to as the dollar or Aussie dollar) is the official currency and legal tender of Australia, including all of its external territories, and three independent sovereign Pacific Island states: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu. In April 2022, it was the sixth most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market and as of Q1 2024 the sixth most-held reserve currency in global reserves.

The Australian dollar was introduced as a decimal currency on 14 February 1966 to replace the non-decimal Australian pound, with the conversion rate of two dollars to the pound (£A1 = A$2). It is subdivided into 100 cents. The $ symbol precedes the amount. On the introduction of the currency, the $ symbol was intended to have two strokes, but the version with one stroke has also always been acceptable.

Oceania (UK: /ˌoʊ.si.ˈɑː.ni.ə, ˌoʊ.ʃi.-, -ˈeɪ.n-/ OH-s(h)ee-AH-nee-ə, -⁠AY-, US: /ˌoʊ.ʃi.ˈæ.ni.ə, -ˈɑː.n-/ OH-shee-A(H)N-ee-ə) is a geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while mainland Australia is regarded as its continental landmass. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 46.3 million as of 2024. Oceania is the smallest continent in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica.

Oceania has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia, French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, which rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index, to the much less developed economies of Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Western New Guinea. The largest and most populous country in Oceania is Australia, and the largest city is Sydney. Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 m (16,024 ft).

Wallis (Wallisian: ʻUvea) is a Polynesian atoll/island in the Pacific Ocean belonging to the French overseas collectivity (collectivité d'outre-mer, or COM) of Wallis and Futuna. It lies north of Tonga, northeast of Fiji, east-northeast of the Hoorn Islands, east of Fiji's Rotuma, southeast of Tuvalu, southwest of Tokelau and west of Samoa. Its area is almost 100 km (39 sq mi) with 8,333 people. Its capital is Mata Utu. Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion. Its highest point is Mount Lulu Fakahega (131 m, 430 ft). Wallis is of volcanic origin with fertile soil and some remaining lakes. Rainfall is plentiful.

It was part of the Tongan maritime empire from around the 13th to 16th century. By that time the influence of the Tuʻi Tonga had declined so much that ʻUvea became important in itself. The big fortress of Talietumu close to Lotoalahi in Mua was the last holdout of the Tongans until they were defeated. The island was renamed "Wallis" after a Cornish navigator, Captain Samuel Wallis, who saw it while sailing aboard HMS Dolphin on 16 August 1767. On 5 April 1842, the authorities of Wallis Island requested protection by France with a protectorate treaty signed in April 1887. After a referendum in 1959, Wallis became a French Overseas Territory in 1961.

Blackbirding was the trade in indentured labourers from the Pacific in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is often described as a form of slavery, despite the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, including Australia. The trade frequently relied on coercion, deception, and kidnapping to transport tens of thousands of indigenous people from islands in the Pacific Ocean to Australia and other European colonies, often to work on plantations in conditions similar to the Atlantic slave trade. These blackbirded people, known as Kanakas or South Sea Islanders, were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, amongst others.

The owners, captains, and crews of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers were termed blackbirders. Blackbirding ships began operations in the Pacific from the 1840s and continued, in some cases, into the 1930s. The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from sugar cane, cotton, and coffee plantations in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti, and Hawaii. In Auckland, a small group of South Sea Islanders worked in flax mills. Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, where Aboriginal Australians were blackbirded from the surrounding areas. In Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the Americas, blackbirders sought workers for their haciendas and to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands.

The 2003 New Year's Honours List is one of the annual New Year Honours, a part of the British monarch's honours system, where 1 January is marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official honours. A number of other Commonwealth realms also mark this day in this way. These awards are presented by or in the name of the reigning monarch, i.e. Queen Elizabeth II or her vice-regal representative.

The list of honours for each year is announced on or around New Year's Day in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Barbados, Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Belize and St. Christopher and Nevis. The exact dates vary every year from country to country. All are published in supplements to the London Gazette or the nation's own gazette. All awards conferred by the monarch (or her representative) some time after the date of the announcement particularly for those service people on active duty conferment is often considerably delayed.