Unclaimed Territory - Midnight Hunt Commander

Terra nullius is a Latin expression meaning "nobody's land". Historically, it referred to the concept that land could be regarded as empty, vacant, or unowned if it was not considered to belong to a recognized sovereign or if its inhabitants were not recognized as exercising sovereignty under European legal standards. Since the nineteenth century, it has been used in international law to refer to the principle by which territories deemed not to belong to any recognized sovereign state could be acquired through occupation. Since the twentieth century, the application of terra nullius to inhabited territories was rejected in several jurisdictions as part of increasing recognition of Indigenous rights, including in Mabo v Queensland (1992) in Australia. Today Antarctica remains as the only major landmass that is sometimes considered to be wholly or partially terra nullius. Other territories sometimes claimed to be terra nullius include Bir Tawil, a strip of land between Egypt and Sudan, and four pockets of land on the banks of the Danube, on the Croatia-Serbia border; both due to border disputes where both competing claims involve assigning a particular piece of territory to the other party.