Akhzivland

  • Micronations
  • Founded 1972
  • President Eli Avivi
  • Anthem Sound of the sea

In the fifties, Persian born sailor Eli Avivi, settled down in Az-Zeeb, a small village on the west coast of Israel near the border of Lebanon. In 1961 the Israeli government granted a resort company a fifty-year lease over this area. When the construction started in 1971 Eli Avivi founded Akhzivland and declared himself president. The place, which consisted of a campsite, a museum and a guesthouse, gathered a cult status and was even mentioned by the official tourist board. Eli Avivi stayed in Akhzivland with his wife Rina until his death on 16th May 2018. It is not clear what will happen to the area now.

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Somaliland

Somaliland is a self-declared state, internationally considered to be an autonomous region of Somalia. It lies in northwestern Somalia, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden. After the overthrow of Somali military dictator Siad Barr, the former British protectorate declared independence in 1991. Somaliland is ranked as partly free by Freedom House, and maintains informal ties with some foreign governments. The de facto state issues its own money: the Somaliland shilling. However, Somaliland’s self-proclaimed independence remains unrecognized by any country or international organization.

Bougainville

The Autonomous Region of Bougainville, named after French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, is geographically part of the Solomon Islands archipelago, but politically of Papua New Guinea. The islands are rich in gold and copper; sources that were the cause for civil unrest. The local people complained that they were not getting their share of the benefits of the mines. In 2001, after a ten-year-long civil war between secessionists and Papua New Guinea, an autonomous Bougainville government was established, and a promise was made that the people of Bougainville could vote over independence in a referendum in 2019. The outcome was almost unanimously in favor of becoming independent. Now a long process of negotiations has started between the government of Papua New Guinea and the autonomous government of Bougainville. Creating a nation is not easy and the economic challenges this country in the making faces are not yet solved.

Celestia

Early in January 1949 James Thomas Mangan posted a formal request to all the countries in the world to recognize his recently registered Nation of Celestial Space. This new nation was formed by ‘all of outer space’. The peaceful ideology behind this claim was that no other country should have political hegemony in space and Mangan protested actively against improper use of his territory, asking to ban nuclear tests and space flights. Mangan was praised and ridiculed during his lifetime but he did foresee the impact that space technology could have on geopolitics.