A landlocked country is a country that is not coastal. , there are 44 landlocked countries, two of them doubly landlocked due to being surrounded by other landlocked nations (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan), and three landlocked de facto states in the world, South Ossetia, Kosovo and Transnistria. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country by area, Kyrgyzstan is the farthest landlocked country from any ocean, and Ethiopia is the world's most populous landlocked country.
Generally, being landlocked creates political and economic disadvantages that having access to international waters would avoid. For this reason, nations large and small throughout history have fought to gain access to open waters, even at great expense in wealth, bloodshed, and political capital.
The economic disadvantages of being landlocked can be alleviated or aggravated depending on degree of development, surrounding trade routes and freedom of trade, commonality of language, and other considerations. Some landlocked countries in Europe are affluent, such as Andorra, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino, Switzerland, and Vatican City. With the exception of Luxembourg (a founding member of NATO), these nations frequently practice neutrality in global political issues.
However, 32 out of the 44 landlocked countries, including those in Africa, Asia, and South America, have been classified as Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) by the United Nations. Nine of the twelve countries with the lowest Human Development Index rankings are landlocked. International initiatives are aimed at reducing inequalities resulting from issues such as these, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, which aims to reduce inequality substantially by 2030.
History In 1990, there were only 30 landlocked countries in the world. However, the dissolutions of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia; the breakup of Yugoslavia; the independence referendums of South Ossetia (de facto state), Eritrea, Montenegro, South Sudan, and the Luhansk People's Republic (de facto state); and the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo (de facto state) created 15 new landlocked countries and five landlocked de facto states while the former landlocked country of Czechoslovakia ceased to exist on 1 January 1993.
On 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a new offensive against the Republic of Artsakh (de facto state) and achieved a decisive victory. The Government of Artsakh was officially dissolved on 1 January 2024. As a result, Artsakh ceased to exist as a landlocked de facto state and the Nagorno-Karabakh region was reintegrated into Azerbaijan.
As of 1 April 2024, there were 44 landlocked countries and three landlocked de facto states (Kosovo, South Ossetia, and Transnistria) in the world.
Significance
Historically, being landlocked has been disadvantageous to a country's development. It cuts a nation off from important sea resources such as fishing, and impedes or prevents direct access to maritime trade, a crucial component of economic and social advance. As such, coastal regions, or inland regions that have access to the World Ocean, tended to be wealthier and more heavily populated than inland regions that have no access to the World Ocean. Paul Collier in his book The Bottom Billion argues that being landlocked in a poor geographical neighbourhood is one of four major development "traps" by which a country can be held back. In general, he found that when a neighbouring country experiences better growth, it tends to spill over into favorable development for the country itself. For landlocked countries, the effect is particularly strong, as they are limited in their trading activity with the rest of the world. He states, "If you are coastal, you serve the world; if you are landlocked, you serve your neighbors." Others have argued that being landlocked has an advantage as it creates a "natural tariff barrier" that protects the country from cheap imports. In some instances, this has led to more robust local food systems.
Landlocked developing countries have significantly higher costs of international cargo transportation compared to coastal developing countries (in Asia the ratio is 3:1).
Historically, traveling between a landlocked country and a country which did not border that country required the traveler to pass border controls twice or more. In recent times the advent of air travel has largely negated this impediment.
Actions to avoid being landlocked Countries have acted to overcome being landlocked by acquiring land that reaches the sea:
The Republic of Ragusa, in 1699, gave the town of Neum to the Ottoman Empire because it did not want to have a land border with the Republic of Venice. This small municipality was inherited by Bosnia and Herzegovina and now provides limited sea access, splitting the Croatian part of the Adriatic coast in two. Since Bosnia and Herzegovina is a new country, railways and ports have not been built for its needs. There is no freight port along its short coastline at Neum, making it effectively landlocked, although there are plans to change this. Instead, the Port of Ploče in Croatia is used. The International Congo Society, which owned the territory now constituting the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was awarded a narrow piece of land cutting through Angola to connect it to the sea by the Conference of Berlin in 1885. After World War I, in the Treaty of Versailles, a part of Germany designated "the Polish corridor" was given to the new Second Polish Republic, for access to the Baltic Sea. This gave Poland a short coastline, but without a large harbour. This was also the pretext for making Danzig (now Gdańsk) with its harbour the Free City of Danzig, to which Poland was given free access. However, the Germans placed obstacles to this free access, especially when it came to military materiel. In response, the small fishing harbour of Gdynia was soon greatly enlarged. In a territorial exchange with Ukraine in 2005, Moldova received a 600-metre (650-yard) long bank of the Danube (which is an international waterway),) and subsequently built its Port of Giurgiulești there.
Trade agreements Countries can establish agreements to provide for free transport of goods through neighbouring countries:
The Treaty of Versailles required Germany to offer Czechoslovakia a lease for 99 years of parts of the ports in Hamburg and Stettin, allowing Czechoslovakia sea trade via the Elbe and Oder rivers. Stettin was annexed by Poland after World War II, but Hamburg continued the contract so that part of the port (now called Moldauhafen) could be used until 2028 for sea trade by a successor of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic. The Danube is an international waterway, and thus landlocked Austria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia and Slovakia have secure access to the Black Sea. However, ocean-going ships cannot use the Danube, so cargo must be transloaded anyway, and many overseas imports into Austria and Hungary use land transport from Atlantic and Mediterranean ports. A similar situation exists for the Rhine river, where Switzerland has boat access, but not for ocean-going ships. Luxembourg has such through the Moselle, but Liechtenstein has no boat access, even though it is located along the Rhine, as the Rhine is not navigable that far upstream. The Mekong is an international waterway so that landlocked Laos has access to the South China Sea (since Laos became independent from French Indochina). However, it is not navigable above the Khone Phapheng Falls. Free ports allow transshipment to short-distance ships or river vessels. The TIR Convention allows sealed road transport without customs checks and charges, mostly in Europe.
Political repercussions Losing access to the sea is generally a great loss to a nation, politically, militarily, and economically. The following are examples of countries becoming landlocked.
The independence of Eritrea, brought about by the 30-year Eritrean War of Independence, caused Ethiopia to become landlocked. The Ethiopian Navy operated from foreign ports in Djibouti and Yemen before being dissolved in 1996, although it was later re-established as a brown-water navy in 2019. Montenegro's decision to abandon the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro caused the federal unit of Serbia to become a landlocked independent state. Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific, and accepted this in treaties signed in 1884 and 1904. The last treaty gives port storage facilities and special treatment for the transit of goods from and to Bolivia through Chilean ports and territory. Peru and Argentina have also given special treatment for the transit of goods. A fluvial Bolivian Navy, which did not exist at the time of the War of the Pacific, was created later and both trains and operates in Lake Titicaca and rivers. The Bolivian people annually celebrate a patriotic "Dia del Mar" (Day of the Sea) to remember its territorial loss, which included both the coastal city of Antofagasta and what has proven to be one of the most significant and lucrative copper deposits in the world. Early in the 21st century, the selection of the route of gas pipes from Bolivia to the sea fueled popular uprisings, as people were against the option of laying the pipes through Chilean territory. Austria and Hungary also lost their access to the sea as a consequence of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) and the Treaty of Trianon (1920) respectively. Previously, although Croatia had a limited constitutional autonomy within the Kingdom of Hungary, the City of Fiume/Rijeka on the Croatian coast was governed directly from Budapest by an appointed governor as a corpus separatum (a separated body), to provide Hungary with its only international port in the periods 1779–1813, 1822–1848 and 1868–1918. The most important ports in Austria were Trieste (now in Italy) and Pula (now in Croatia). In 1801, the Nizam's dominion of Hyderabad State assumed its current borders as a landlocked princely state with territories in the central Deccan, bounded on all sides by British India. For the preceding 150 years it had had a considerable coastline on the Bay of Bengal, but that was annexed by the British. It is possible that one of the causes of the Paraguayan War was Paraguay's lack of direct ocean access (although this is disputed; see the linked article). When the Entente Powers divided the former Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Sèvres at the close of World War I, Armenia was promised part of the Trebizond vilayet (roughly corresponding to the modern Trabzon and Rize provinces in Turkey). This would have given Armenia access to the Black Sea. However, the Sèvres treaty collapsed with the Turkish War of Independence and was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which firmly established Turkish rule over the area. In 2011, South Sudan broke off from Sudan. As part of Sudan, South Sudan was landlocked, and this remained the case upon independence. There still remains conflict between the two countries over the oil fields in South Sudan.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea now gives a landlocked country a right of access to and from the sea without taxation of traffic through transit states. The United Nations has a programme of action to assist landlocked developing countries,UN Report and the current responsible Undersecretary-General is Anwarul Karim Chowdhury.