Netherlands Antilles dissolved as per 10-10-10, how to change Country dropdowns?

user_157882 0
Viewed 2014

See also Dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles.

In a nutshell: Curaçao and Sint Maarten become autonomous and the remnant of the islands (the BES islands) become special municipalities of the Netherlands.

The question is: how should we replace Netherlands Antilles (with country code ISO-3166-2:AN) in the country dropdown of the average webapplication? I can't find any information about the new country codes. Do we have to add Curaçao and Sint Maarten to the dropdown with the country code AN? How about the BES islands?

country-codes web-applications
2 Answers

Last week they have finally new ISO 3166 codes assigned.

From the ISO 3166-2:AN page:

The Netherlands Antilles were officially assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code AN before it was dissolved into five separate territories in 2010, and the entry will be deleted from ISO 3166-2 as a result. Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which became overseas countries in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, are now officially assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes CW and SX respectively. Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba, which became "special municipalities" of the Netherlands, are now officially assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code BQ under the collective entry "Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba".

The ISO 3166-1 decoding table was last updated on December 15, 2010.

On existing webapplications, I think it makes sense to keep AN for at least one year for display only. I would however show some messagebox in some user profile page and/or send an email to AN users that the user has now the opportunity to fix the country selection to match the actual new country.

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