Isles & Co.

The Worldcontest - my favorits

Rapa Nui - Bien

Schwiiz - Mir Sind Am Wäg

Switzerland is a federal, democratic state in Central Europe. It borders Germany to the north, Austria and Liechtenstein to the east, Italy to the south and France to the west.

Switzerland has a population of just over 9 million people living in an area of ​​just under 41,300 square kilometers. The state is one of the most densely populated states in Europe, with the population concentrated in the Mittelland, the basin between the Jura and the Alps, and in southern Ticino. The eight largest cities and economic centers are Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Lausanne, Bern, Winterthur, Lucerne and St. Gallen.

The state has a share in three large language areas: German in German-speaking Switzerland, French in French-speaking Switzerland (Suisse romande, Western Switzerland, Welschschweiz) and Italian in Italian-speaking Switzerland; the fourth language area is Romansh (in parts of the canton of Graubünden). German, French, Italian and Romansh are the official languages ​​of Switzerland, the first three being the official languages ​​of the federal government. In order not to favor any one language, the country code is "CH", the abbreviation of the Latin term Confoederatio Helvetica.

Switzerland - Mir Sind Am Weg

Republiki ya Kongó - Nazali Pembeni

Congo is a republic in Central Africa. Its capital and largest metropolitan area, located off the port city of Pointe-Noire, is Brazzaville; the country is also known as Congo-Brazzaville.

The country borders Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly the Belgian Congo or Zaire), the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, and the Atlantic Ocean. The United Nations Development Programme classifies the Republic of the Congo as a country with medium human development.

Congo - Nazali Pembeni

دولة إرتريا (Daulat Iritriyā) - نحن نسير معًا (Nahn Nasir Mean)

Winner of the week: 🥇2

Eritrea is a country in northeastern Africa. It borders Sudan to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south, Djibouti to the southeast, and the Red Sea to the northeast. A quarter of Eritrea's population of almost four million is concentrated in the capital region of Asmara; the other cities are significantly smaller.

The Kingdom of Medri Bahri, with its capital Debarwa and ruled by Baher Negash, was formerly located in the Eritrean highlands. The Eritrean lowlands were an Ottoman and Egyptian colony for more than 300 years, with Massawa as their capital. In 1890, Eritrea became an Italian colony. From 1941, the country was under British administration and, from 1952, was federally united with the then Empire of Abyssinia, before being centrally incorporated into Haile Selassie's Ethiopian Empire as the Province of Eritrea in 1961. After a thirty-year war of independence, Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia in 1993.

Since the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (PFDJ) won its independence, President Isaias Afewerki has ruled the country in an authoritarian one-party system, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), which emerged from the independence movement. Parties other than the PFDJ are banned, and freedom of expression and the press are severely restricted. Eritrea has neither a parliament nor independent courts. As a result, there have been no national elections in the past 33 years. The country is the only one in the world without a constitution. A strict system of military conscription and forced labor prevails. Serious human rights violations occur regularly. Eritrea is often referred to as "Africa's North Korea." Large numbers of people have fled abroad to escape the regime in the past and continue to do so.

Eritrea - Nahn Nasir Mean

Eritrea 🥇 - Nahn Nasir Mean

Sankattan Siha Na Islas Mariånas - Ta Hanao Gi Chalan

The Northern Mariana Islands, fully known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, are a sub-territory of the Mariana Islands, an unincorporated territory of the United States in the Pacific Ocean, south of Japan and north of Guam.

The area consists of 16 islands stretching over 500 kilometers, of which Saipan, Tinian, and Rota are the largest. The Marianas Trench Marine National Monument was designated there in 2009.

86 percent of the population speaks a language other than English in private, including Micronesian and Polynesian languages. Population growth is 2.8 percent per year. Due to the predominantly female migrant workers in the textile sector, the Northern Mariana Islands used to have the largest female-to-female ratio in the world at 1:0.77, but this is no longer the case following the collapse of the textile industry. The population has declined in recent years, to an estimated 55,000 in 2017.

Marianas - Ta Hanao Gi Chalan

Cymru (Wales) - Ar Y Ffordd

Wales is a region of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is located in the west of the island of Great Britain and borders England and the Celtic and Irish Seas. The capital of Wales is Cardiff (Welsh: Caerdydd). The country is one of the six Celtic nations.

Wales - Ar Y Ffordd

Oʻzbekiston Respublikasi - Yo'ldamiz Biz

Uzbekistan is a 448,978 km² landlocked country in Central Asia with 37 million inhabitants. It borders on Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Tajikistan to the southeast, Afghanistan to the south and Turkmenistan to the southwest. The capital and, with around 2.5 million inhabitants, the largest city of the former Soviet republic is Tashkent. Other important cities in the Islamic country are Samarkand and Bukhara on the historic Silk Road.

After the founding of the state, the country was ruled authoritarianly by Islom Karimov. After Shavkat Mirziyoyev assumed the presidency in 2016, many repressions were relaxed, but serious human rights violations still occur regularly.

Uzbekistan - Yo'ldamiz Biz

Taiwan - Women

Taiwan is an island nation in East Asia that is diplomatically recognized by only a few countries due to the One China Policy. Its territory consists of the main island of Taiwan (99%) and other smaller islands. This technologically advanced industrial nation, which produces well over half of all semiconductor components manufactured worldwide, has a population of approximately 23.5 million.

The Republic of China was proclaimed in Nanking on January 1, 1912, following the Xinhai Revolution on the Chinese mainland. The island of Taiwan, under Chinese rule from 1683 to 1895 and from 1895 to 1945 under the rule of the Japanese Empire, only returned to the Republic of China at the end of World War II. In 1949 – following the defeat in the civil war against the Communist Party and the founding of the People's Republic of China on the mainland – the government, elites, and armed forces of the Republic of China withdrew to the island of Taiwan. There, the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, established a one-party rule that lasted for several decades, maintaining a state of emergency. The second half of the 20th century was characterized by high economic growth; towards the end of the 1980s, the Kuomintang initiated a gradual democratization process. In several scales of democracy measurement, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is today, alongside Japan and South Korea, one of the most democratic states in Asia, comparable to Germany and Switzerland.

Even after the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the government of the Republic of China initially represented the Chinese state at the United Nations and was a permanent member of the UN Security Council. As a result of the People's Republic's one-China policy, however, more and more states severed diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, which was forced to cede its UN membership to the People's Republic in 1971 with UN Resolution 2758. In 1979, the United States finally severed diplomatic relations after establishing official relations with the People's Republic (Taiwan Relations Act). Today, only a minority of the international community maintains formal diplomatic relations with the government in Taipei. The status of the Republic of China under international law is disputed and is the subject of the Taiwan conflict.

Taiwan - Women

United States of America - Voices

Winner of the week: 🥇8

The United States of America is a democratic, federal republic in North America and, with some islands, in Oceania. It consists of 50 states, the capital Washington, D.C., which is its own federal district, as well as five major territories and nine island territories.

The 48 contiguous states, the so-called Lower 48, together with Alaska, from which they are separated by Canadian territory, form the Continental United States. The state of Hawaii and some smaller outlying areas are located in the Pacific and Caribbean. The country has a very high geographical and climatic diversity with a large variety of animal and plant species.

The United States of America is the third largest country in the world both in terms of area and population. Its area of ​​9.83 million square kilometers is exceeded only by Russia and Canada and its population of more than 334 million inhabitants is exceeded only by India and China. The most populous city in the USA is New York City, a global metropolis and one of the most important cultural, media, economic, trade and financial centers in the world. Important metropolitan areas are Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Boston and San Francisco, each with over 5 million inhabitants. The degree of urbanization is 83 percent. A well-known national myth is that the United States is one of the most multicultural countries in the world; However, empirical studies show that the United States performs only averagely in global comparisons of ethnic and cultural diversity.

On July 4, 1776, delegates from the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence of the United States and thus the founding of the USA. The American War of Independence, which ended with the recognition of independence in the Peace of Paris (1783), was the first successful war of independence against a European colonial power. The current constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. 27 additional articles were added. The first ten amendments, collectively called the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and guarantee a variety of unalienable rights.

Driven by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the United States expanded its territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific throughout the 19th century. This included the violent expulsion of indigenous Indian tribes, the acquisition of new territories, etc. in the Mexican-American War and the founding of new states. The American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the United States in 1865 and to the fact that it finally embarked on the path to becoming an industrial state. By the end of the 19th century, the United States was the preeminent power in the Americas, and its economy had become the largest of the time.

U. S. A. - Voices

U. S. A. 🥇 - Voices

دولة فلسطين (Daulat Filastīn) - على الطريق (Ealaa Altariq)

The State of Palestine (Arabic دولة فلسطين, DMG Daulat Filasṭīn) is a de facto state in the Near East. He claims the areas of the West Bank including Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Palestine is recognized as a state by 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations; The neighboring country Israel, the USA, the German-speaking countries and some other countries in the Western world do not do this, but maintain official relations with it.

In 1988, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) declared independence, which has since claimed all of the territory occupied by Israel since 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. From 1994 onwards, several agreements led to Israel's withdrawal and thus to limited independence for Palestine in the autonomous areas. In 2007, due to the Fatah-Hamas conflict, Palestine split into two territories: the West Bank, ruled by Fatah, with around three million inhabitants, and the Gaza Strip, ruled by the radical Islamic Hamas, with around two million inhabitants. Both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are governed by authoritarian rule. After 2006, no elections were held in either area. Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are severely restricted.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice declared in a legal opinion that Israel was occupying the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law. Israel must evacuate all Israeli settlers from the occupied territories and compensate for the damage caused by the occupation. The legal opinion is not binding.

Palestine - Ealaa Altariq

Anguilla - We Pon Di Shoreline

Anguilla is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom (British Overseas Territory Anguilla). It is located in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. The area forms the main island of the same name, Anguilla, together with several small, uninhabited coral islands. The name was derived from the Italian word anguilla for “eel” and refers to the elongated shape of the main island. Snake Island was also used as an alternative name. The Arawak called the island Malliouhana, the “arrow-shaped sea serpent.”

Anguilla - We Pon Di Shoreline

Even as a small child I wanted to learn a musical instrument...

...since there was a music school in our small town where I grew up, but it was limited to the activities of the local musicians' band, the choice was rather limited... because piano, guitar or saxophone were not offered and that's why I decided me for the trumpet, which was not used for cast-technical reasons, so the FLÜGELHORN became my instrument...
In my youth I turned my back on music and was active in sports towards the end of my teenage years.

Rapa Nui - Bien

Ramixjoe ♈︎