Lots of islands around the world are disputed between one or more countries, and are also uninhabited. It’s frequently said that they are “disputed between [X] and [Y] but administered by [Y],” or something similar. What does administering such an island really mean when there’s nothing there and no one on it except maybe flora/fauna?
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Can you give any specific examples of this term being used?
Let’s imagine that you have an island and 2 countries claim they own it. The one that will kick your ass if you try to occupy it is the one who “administers” it.
It’s just a word used to describe actual control.
Disputed territories are not just limited to islands. Multiple countries can claim a piece of land, but only one of them has people enforcing its rules on the ground.
Specifics will vary by location and treaty and ongoing negotiations and military status.
For a remote uninhabited island “administration” doesn’t mean much beyond having a coast guard boat wander past every now and then to make sure it’s still uninhabited and there’s nothing suspicious going on.
For an inhabited disputed territory like the Crimean peninsula, this means full governmental duties and all that entails. Russia is the acting government of the territory even though Ukraine and much of the world contests that claim.
Morocco administers Western Sahara. It’s not internationally recognized by every country, but de facto (as a matter of fact) it is under Moroccan control, people are issued Moroccan IDs and driving licenses and are registered as citizens and go to Moroccan public school, borders are guarded and enforced by Morocco, and so on. That’s basically what administrating amounts to, and as they say, possession is nine tenths of the law.
It’s the same deal with vacant islands, except a whole lot less complicated. All you need to do is make sure your military is on it and not the other party’s.
It usually means that some country A claims they own that place, but in practice Country B actually acts like it does.Country a can’t really admit that this place is for all intents and purpose part of country B and thus they use such phrasing.
It recognizes de-facto rule without acknowledging it as de-jure rule.
This other country might currently control this place and we don’t want to start a war over it or really care enough to fight them over it, but we want to keep our theoretical claim to it alive, because it might become relevant in the future.
When I was in school in the late 80s in Germany we used official maps that had some very thin dotted lines run though Poland and Russia with an explanation at the side that was extremely long and legalese, but boiled down to the idea that the German government never had fully given up on a claim to those parts.
A year later we got a new Atlas that had only one Germany and all those lines in the east were gone, the government having formally renounced any claim to them in the unification treaty.
As for why any government would care about disputes about ownership over uninhabited islands, those islands usually come with ownership of the surrounding water, the fish that swim in them and any oil or gas that might be buried beneath the sea-floor.
This is really specific and unique to each specific location, but in the most general terms, the country that administers a disputed territory is the one that has actual physical control over it. If it’s a small uninhabited island, it might mean as little as putting up a flag and maybe an unmanned weather station, or maybe a a scientific team drops by once a year to track the local wildlife or the occasional naval vessel checking in to make sure no one else is there.
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