Marshall Islands Municipalities (original) (raw)

Sorin Cosoveanu sent me a copy of the local government constitution for Kili/Bikini/Ejit, which defines its name to be that.

Note: the Republic of the Marshall Islands is so small that I have listed it as having only one primary division, consisting of the entire country. The table on this page shows municipalities, which I classify as secondary divisions.

There are various official sources that show the Marshall Islands divided into 24 municipalities, and others show them as 33 municipalities. My editorial decision is that something must have happened around 2000 that effectively merged some of the uninhabited atolls with other municipalities. Nuclear testing conducted by the U.S. in 1946-1958 forced the relocation of many Marshallese, who tend to identify with their ancestral homes. That would provide a rationale for merging the abandoned atoll with the municipality of relocation. This is only a hypothesis. In any case, there seem to have been name changes that imply two such mergers: Enewetak with Ujelang and Bikini with Kili.

For as long as I've been tracking them, there have been distinct FIPS 6-4 codes for 33 municipalities. When GEC first issued codes for the divisions of the Marshall Islands, in its Update 12, dated 2013-06-30, it had distinct codes for 24 municipalities, as shown here.

An update to ISO 3166-2, issued on 2014-11-03, changes the names of two municipalities from Enewetak to Enewetak and Ujelang and from Kili to Bikini and Kili.

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter number II-1, dated 2010-02-03, has changes to the listing for the Marshall Islands. Some of the island names have been changed to variants. Ujelang (uninhabited) has been dropped from the listing, and Jabat (inhabited) has been added.

International standard ISO 3166-2 was published on 1998-12-15. It superseded ISO/DIS 3166-2 (draft international standard), which came out in fall 1996. The draft standard shows no administrative subdivisions of the Marshall Islands. The final standard shows 24 municipalities. They appear to be a subset of the 33 municipalities recognized by FIPS PUB 6-4. It also shows two chains of islands, which are a higher level of subdivision than the municipalities (i.e., each chain includes numerous municipalities).

The change is inconsistent with ISO's usual practice. About twenty small island nations had subdivisions that were listed in the draft standard, but were dropped from the final standard as being "not relevant". The Marshall Islands is even smaller than many of those twenty.

Other names of subdivisions:

Source [4] has an unusually thorough list of alternate names for the atolls. In a few cases, the names in the table above are missing, but the identification should be straightforward. It also gives the latitudes and longitudes of the islands. (List of sources is on theMarshall Islands page.)

1. Ailinglaplap: Ailinglapalap (variant)
2. Bokak: Taongi (variant)
3. Enewetak: Eniwetok (variant)
4. Jabat: Jabwot (variant)
5. Namorik: Namdrik (variant)
6. Taka: Toke (variant)
7. Ujelang: Agelong (variant)
8. Utirik: Utrik (variant)

Change history:

1. 1947-04-02: Following the defeat of Japan in World War II, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was created and granted in trust to the United States. It was divided into districts (Kosrae, Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Ponape, Truk, and Yap). Marshall Islands had had two subdistricts since 1946-12: Kwajalein and Majuro, with capitals at Kwajalein and Uliga, respectively.
2. 1986-10-21: The Marshall Islands became a freely associated state of the United States.
3. 1991-09-17: Marshall Islands became fully independent as the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
4. 1999: According to FIPS PUB 6-4, the Marshall Islands contained the 33 municipalities shown in the table below.
5. ~2000: Nominally, Kili merged with Bikini to form Kili/Bikini/Ejit; Ujelang merged with Enewetak to form Enewetak and Ujelang; Jemo merged with Likiep; Ailinginae and Rongrik merged with Rongelap; Bikar, Toke, and Bokak merged with Utirik; Erikub merged with Wotje. Some of the merged municipalities have incompatible FIPS 6-4 codes. None of them had incompatible FIPS 10-4 codes. Either the merged entities had the same 10-4 codes (duplicates), or all but one of them had no 10-4 codes at all. As for ISO 3166-2 codes, all but one of the merged entities had no ISO code in each case.
6. There seems to be no clear indication of which uninhabited municipalities merged with which others. To specify that, I relied on whatever clues I could find: the renaming of two municipalities, geographic proximity, and statements inWikipedia . That's why I said "Nominally."

U.S. government standards FIPS 6-4 and FIPS 10-4 were withdrawn on 2008-09-02. I have preserved those codes in the table above as a historical record.

FIPS PUB 6-4 divides the Marshall Islands into municipalities. It assigns a three-digit code to each of them. FIPS 5-2 provides a code for each state, territory, or freely associated state of the U.S. For the Marshall Islands, it specifies 68. When the FIPS 5-2 and 6-4 codes are concatenated, as in 68430 for Wotje, the result is a code that uniquely identifies a county-equivalent unit in the United States.

Population history:

From 1946 to 1980, the population of Enewetak was evacuated to Ujelang because of nuclear testing. A similar, but more complex, evacuation removed the people of Bikini to Kili. In the 1973 census, 19 people were included in the total but did not state their municipality. Municipalities are not listed here if they had zero population during the entire period (source [3]).