Glossary:Region
In statistical contexts region can have two distinct meanings; it can refer to a geographical area:
- at sub-national level, a subdivision of a country, at different possible levels, but most commonly at level 1 of the Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS);
- at supra-national level, a region of the world such as ‘Latin America’, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’, 'South East Asia', etc.; many international organisations are organised at the level of world regions: e.g. AU, ASEAN, CAN, NAFTA - and of course the European Union (EU). Within the EU, countries are sometimes also grouped in supra-national regions like the Baltic Member States, the Benelux, the Mediterranean Member States or the Nordic Member States.