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In international law and political geography, an overseas territory (commonly classified as a dependent territory, dependency, or external territory) is a geographically distinct territorial jurisdiction that does not possess full independent sovereign statehood, remaining under the ultimate constitutional sovereignty or administrative oversight of a distant sovereign state known as the metropole. While many overseas territories enjoy substantial internal autonomy—exercising executive, legislative, and judicial powers through locally elected assemblies—they lack external sovereignty: they do not hold sovereign membership within the United Nations, cannot maintain independent national armed forces, and depend upon their administering state for national defence, diplomatic representation, and international treaty obligations.
From a multilateral perspective, the international status of non-self-governing territories is regulated under Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter, specifically Article 73, which obligates administering powers to promote political advancement, self-government, and economic well-being among territorial populations. The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization (commonly termed the C-24) maintains an official roster of seventeen Non-Self-Governing Territories worldwide—ranging from Western Sahara and Gibraltar to American Samoa and the British Virgin Islands. Under international law, territorial inhabitants retain the inalienable right to self-determination, possessing the sovereign choice to pursue full national independence, free association with an independent state, or complete constitutional integration into the administering metropole.
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