The Newest Countries in the World

The Czech Republic was formed in the wake of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that brought liberal democracy to Czechoslovakia following 41 years as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. On Jan. 1, 1993, the former Eastern Bloc country peacefully split into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Communist rule of Czechoslovakia ended in 1989 with the Velvet Revolution, but the federal republic consisting of two constituent states that had been formed in 1969 wouldn’t last much longer thanks to many Slovaks’ demands for greater sovereignty. Premiers Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic and Vladimir Mečiar of Slovakia agreed on July 23, 1992, to dissolve the 74-year union of the two republics at the start of the following year.

This coastal country bordered by Ethiopia and Sudan is the product of a 35-year-old resistance movement against imperial Ethiopia, whose emperor, Haile Selassie, annexed the Eritrean territory in 1962. Eritrea gained United Nations-supervised independence after its far-left rebels, helped by Ethiopian rebels, took control of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Joining the Marshall Islands, Palau opposed efforts to create the Western Pacific Ocean’s Federated States of Micronesia in 1979, opting instead for independent status with the support of Japan and the Philippines. Twelve years after approving a new constitution, Palau became an independent state.

Following efforts to declare independence from Portugal, this Southeast Asian island country was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 and quickly declared a province. After years of violence between separatists and the Indonesian military, the United Nations brokered a deal in 1999 to withdraw Indonesian troops and to begin the process of creating what is officially known as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.

Like Czechoslovakia, the Balkan country of Yugoslavia broke up in the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and ensuing efforts to maintain a two-state federation. But Montenegro pursued its own economic and pro-independence policies, and despite efforts in 2002 to form a decentralized union re-named Serbia and Montenegro, a 2006 referendum on Montenegrin independence narrowly passed to break up the union.

Slobodan Milošević, the late war criminal and Serbian leader, pursued efforts to seize power from non-Serbian autonomous provinces in Yugoslavia, leading to ethic and regional tensions that led to the breakaway of Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Macedonia. Serbia and Montenegro remained united as a federal republic until Montenegro successfully pursued independence through a referendum in 2006.

Serbian president Slobodan Milošević sought to reduce Kosovo’s special autonomous status within Serbia while also oppressing the region’s ethic Albania population, leading to a non-violent separatist movement and the Kosovo War (February 1998 to June 1999) with forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but many UN member states do not officially recognize its country status.

Though many unresolved issues remain between Sudan and South Sudan, including borders, the sharing of oil revenue, and citizenship rights, then-Sudanese President Omar Bashir peacefully acknowledged the results of South Sudan’s independence referendum in 2011. But Africa’s newest country struggled with civil war until February 2020, a conflict that killed about 400,000 people.