Life in an unrecognised state
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you do business with the rest of the world when nobody officially accepts that your nation state even exists? Rob Young looks at the struggles facing unrecognised breakaway states such as Abkhazia, Transnistria and Nagorno Karabakh.
Thomas de Waal of think tank Carnegie Europe explains how many of them have turned to smuggling and even Bitcoin mining as a way of making ends meet. Meanwhile the BBC's Ivana Davidovic reports from Nicosia in Cyprus where the city's main thoroughfare is still physically divided between the prosperous Greek south and the unrecognised Turkish north.
Plus how can these nations compete international football? Sascha Duerkop has the answer. He is general secretary of Conifa, the international football league for teams that Fifa refuses to recognise.
(Picture: Children wave the North Cypriot flag; Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Death in Ice Valley is returning. We've been trying to find answers to an unsolved mystery. |
| 0:06.6 | And now we're back with an update on the case. We'll be here to tell you more about it at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:17.8 | Hello, I'm Rob Young. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Coming up, the nations that don't |
| 0:24.5 | officially exist and some of the unusual industries powering their economies. Transnistria, which is the |
| 0:30.8 | breakaway state of Moldova, basically gets free Russian gas. And that's one reason, for example, |
| 0:36.2 | that Transnistria has a little Bitcoin mining economy because of all the cheap electricity. And that's one reason, for example, that Transnistria has a little Bitcoin mining economy |
| 0:39.3 | because of all the cheap electricity. And the frustrations facing entrepreneurs trying to trade in |
| 0:44.8 | countries shunned by most of the world. To show your passport three or four times a day, |
| 0:49.7 | it gets a bit wearing. The majority of the people of Cyprus, I believe, want the island to be |
| 0:54.1 | reunited in some shape or form. And it's idiocy, really. That's a bit wearing. The majority of the people of Cyprus, I believe, want the island to be reunited in some shape or form, and it's idiocy, really. That's all in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:02.8 | There are almost 200 nations in the world, but there are also a few dozen others that, |
| 1:09.2 | officially at least, don't exist. You won't find them on |
| 1:12.7 | most maps. Their flags don't fly at the United Nations. Their sportsmen and women don't |
| 1:17.7 | usually compete on the world stage. Tom Deval from the Policy Institute, Carnegie Europe, has been |
| 1:23.7 | to lots of these unrecognised states and has a guide to some of the most prominent. |
| 1:28.7 | These unrecognised states are all over the world. You've got Taiwan, which is the biggest and most famous, |
| 1:35.7 | which is almost a recognised state. It's recognised by a number of states. You've got places like |
| 1:41.7 | Western Sahara and Somali land in Africa. |
| 1:46.0 | But Europe actually has the biggest preponderance of them, and particularly the former Soviet Union, |
| 1:51.3 | because when the Soviet Union broke up, there were a number of disputed territories, |
| 1:56.1 | several of which have persisted over the years and are basically self-governing but are not recognized. |
| 2:02.5 | And I and others call these places de facto states. They rule themselves, but they are not |
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