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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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.
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