Indonesia

Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago country, with roughly 17,000 islands strung along the equator. Only about a third of them are inhabited.

Counts range from about 13,000 to 17,500, depending on what qualifies as an island and how it is surveyed.

Context

Indonesian government material has cited 17,504 islands, a number repeated widely, but Indonesia's mapping agency has acknowledged that no definitive official count exists. A 2004 Ministry of Home Affairs dataset recorded about 7,870 named islands and about 9,634 without names, so more than half of the total lacked official names or documentation.

Counts depend on the definition. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an island is a naturally formed area of land that stays above water at high tide, which excludes reclaimed land. Tidal changes, satellite mapping resolution and whether tiny rocks are included all move the total. Indonesia reported 13,466 islands to the UN in 2012, a figure later raised as surveys continued.

The country stretches over about 5,000 km east to west, and its major islands include Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea that it shares with other countries. Because of the absence of a standard national geodatabase, the totals quoted here should be read as approximate. Reclaimed land and seasonal sandbars are excluded under the legal definition.