Saint Martin

Saint Martin is an island in Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the northeastern Caribbean, approximately 300 km (190 mi) east of Puerto Rico (United States). The 87 km2 (34 mi2) island has been divided since 1648 roughly 60:40 between France (53 km2 or 20 mi2) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands (34 km2 or 13 mi2), but the Dutch part is more populated than the French. The northern French part comprises the Collectivity of Saint Martin and is an overseas collectivity of France. The southern Dutch part comprises Sint Maarten and is one of four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Even though the island is an overseas possession of two European Union member states, only the French part of the island is part of the EU. On 1 January 2019, the population of the whole island was 73,777 inhabitants, with 41,177 living on the Dutch side and 32,489 on the French side. The figure for the French side is based on censuses that took place after the devastation of Hurricane Irma in September 2017, whereas the figure for the Dutch side is only a post-censal estimate still based on the 2011 census. The first census since Hurricane Irma on the Dutch side of the island took place in October 2022. The population of the island on 1 January 2017, before Hurricane Irma, was 75,869 (40,535 on the Dutch side, 35,334 on the French side). The island's pre-colonial names include Oualichi (Arawakan, meaning 'the island of women') and Soualiga (Kalinago, meaning 'the island of salt'). Collectively, the two territories are known as "Saint Martin / Sint Maarten", or sometimes "SXM", the IATA identifier for Princess Juliana International Airport, the island's main airport. St. Martin (the French portion) received the ISO 3166-1 code MF in October 2007. In 2010, the Dutch part had its status changed to that of a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and was given the code SX.

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