Belize 🇧🇿

Belize is a sovereign country in Central America, in the wider region of the Americas. The short and official forms of the name are the same. Belmopan is the capital.

Around 417,072 people live there, placing it 176th of 249 by population — between Brunei above it and the Bahamas below. Among the 7 entries in Central America it ranks 6th by area and 7th by population.

By land area it covers 22,966 km², which ranks it 152nd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Djibouti and just ahead of El Salvador. For scale, it is around a fifth smaller than Belgium.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 17.3° N, 88.8° W, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,920 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Niger, Mali and Vietnam sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

2 countries share a land border with it: Guatemala and Mexico. The largest of them by area is Mexico, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 149.3 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Spread across 22,966 km², that works out at about 18 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

3 languages carry official status: Belizean Creole, English and Spanish. Belizean Creole is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Belize.

Someone from Belize is a Belizean.

Inside the Americas it places 27th of 55 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Central America.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Belize ranks 152nd of 249 by area and 176th by population. That works out at 0.015% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and less than a thousandth of a percent of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Belize in the size ordering are Djibouti at 23,200 km² and El Salvador at 21,041 km², against Belize's 22,966 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Belize averages 18 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 210th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Within Central America, Belize is the least populous of the 7 entries listed here, and 6th by area. Panama is the next step up. Being the smallest of a group is not the same as being small in absolute terms — the subregional context is what gives the figure meaning.

Guatemala is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Central America has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇵🇦 Panama
• 🇬🇹 Guatemala

The Belize dollar (BZD) is used only in Belize among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Belize among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Money there is the Belize dollar ($, BZD). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Belize, the answer is Belmopan.

Websites there use the .bz domain. To phone it from abroad you dial +501. Standard country codes: bz and BLZ.

Belize is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.