In northeastern Africa, along the border between Egypt and Sudan, lies a strip of arid land covering 795 square miles where no country’s laws apply.
It is called Bir Tawil, Arabic for “tall well,” and it is the only habitable territory on the planet that no state claims. It is considered terra nullius, or no man’s land.
Most territorial disputes pit two or more countries against each other in a contest for control. Bir Tawil is the reverse: a place nobody wants.
Neither Cairo nor Khartoum includes this desert trapezoid on its official maps.
The 1902 Colonial Line That Left Bir Tawil Unclaimed
This cartographic quirk dates to British colonial rule over the area at the turn of the 20th century.
In 1899, the British government drew a straight political border along the 22nd parallel north to separate Egypt from Sudan. That line placed Bir Tawil in Sudan and put the Hala’ib Triangle, a 7,900-square-mile area with a Red Sea coastline and mineral deposits, under Egyptian sovereignty.
In 1902, the same British administrators redrew the line, this time as an administrative border based on how nomadic tribes had traditionally used the land.
The revision placed Bir Tawil under Egyptian administration because the Ababda tribe used it for grazing, while the Hala’ib Triangle came under Sudanese control because of its ties to the Beja people.
After independence in 1956, Sudan’s government upheld the 1902 administrative border to retain sovereignty over the Hala’ib coastal strip. Egypt, by contrast, rejected the revision and insisted on the 1899 political border.
The result was a strange symmetry: both countries claim the coast, and neither wants anything to do with Bir Tawil.
If either country claimed Bir Tawil, it would be accepting the very border that costs it the Red Sea coast.
An Empty Desert: Extreme Heat and Wildcat Gold Mining
Bir Tawil is a landscape of sand plains, dry alluvial fans and rocky hills such as Mount Hagar el Zarqa, which at 2,172 feet is its highest point.
Deep in the Nubian Desert, summer temperatures frequently top 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and it almost never rains.
The territory has no basic infrastructure, no permanent settlements, no paved roads and no military garrisons.
Its only inhabitants are transient: artisanal miners from local nomadic communities who sweep the area with metal detectors for gold just below the surface, free of any government oversight.
Its status as terra nullius has also drawn private expeditions by foreigners intent on proclaiming kingdoms of their own. No state has recognized any of them.
In June 2014, an American traveled to the area, planted a flag designed by his family and proclaimed the so-called “Kingdom of North Sudan.” In the years that followed, various online groups issued similar declarations.
Under international law, only states can acquire sovereignty over territory, and no individual can simply create a state. Statehood requires a permanent population, an effective government and the capacity to conduct international relations.
None of the private ventures launched in Bir Tawil have changed their legal status.
The Diplomatic Deadlock That Leaves Bir Tawil Without an Owner
Bir Tawil remains in limbo because Egypt and Sudan have never settled the eastern stretch of their shared border.
Egypt has held de facto control of the Hala’ib Triangle since the 1990s. Yet Cairo has not extended its military or administrative presence to Bir Tawil, a move that would undermine its claim to the coast.
As long as the dispute over the Red Sea coast remains unresolved, Bir Tawil will stay beyond the reach of any state.
What remains is 795 square miles of stone and sand that colonial mapmakers left without an owner. Bir Tawil endures as an anomaly with no real parallel on the modern political map.
