Bir Tawil

V・T・E Bir Tawil, Africa

latitude: 21.865, longitude: 33.625

Browse map of Bir Tawil 21°51′54.00″ N, 33°37′30.00″ E

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External links: Notes Quality checks with Osmose Keep Right! OSM Inspector Streets without names CheckAutopista2 Public transport with öpnvkarte.de Wikipedia: en Wikidata: Q620634 Wikimedia Commons OpenStreetMap contributors map Mapillary KartaView

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Bir Tawil is an unclaimed territory in Africa at latitude 21°51′54.00″ North, longitude 33°37′30.00″ East.

It is a small area of desert that technically belongs no country because of a discrepancy between the straight political boundary of 1899 and the irregular administrative boundary of 1902.

This page contains information relating to mapping activity that affects Bir Tawil.

Background

Egypt: You take it.
Sudan: No, you take it.

Egypt asserts the straight boundary, and Sudan asserts the irregular boundary. That means both countries claim the nearby Hala'ib Triangle, and neither claims Bir Tawil.

If either side were to claim Bir Tawil (the small white area on the map to the right), they would lose claim to the larger Hala'ib triangle (green area), which has resources that are worthy of disputing over by both countries.

Relation and presentation

Bir Tawil is defined as relation 3335661 3335661. Unlike the site of Titanic, which is well inside international waters, Egypt and Sudan bounds the territory. Until recently, Nominatim mistook Bir Tawil for being part of either country: this is no longer the case.

Boundaries

Bir Tawil is an irregular trapezoid of the following points (clockwise from north west):

• 22°00′00″ North and 33°10′00″ East
• 22°00′00″ North and 34°04′48″ East
• 21°46′00″ North and 34°00′00″ East (Bir Hesmet)
• 21°43′30″ North and 33°33′10.5″ East (Jebel Bartazuga)

The route of the southern boundary of Bir Tawil is based on the description from page 4–5 of the International Boundary Study regarding Sudan and Egypt (27 July 1962) – as a work of the US federal government, that publication is in the Public Domain and therefore can be used on OpenStreetMap.

Geography

You might be thinking: what's the reality on the ground? It is simple: it is generally just a desert with mountains. As Atlas Obscura puts it:

"Neither nation is interested in Bir Tawil simply because there is nothing there."
— Atlas Obscura, http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bir-tawil-1 (accessed 22 November 2013)

However, just because Bir Tawil is desolate does not imply that OpenStreetMap cannot have a try a making at map of Bir Tawil in good faith. We are not sure about the default Bing imagery though: tracks tend to get blown over quickly, although bare rock and wadis are robust when compared with the newly released MapBox imagery (judging by the patterns).

On the plus side, it should be easy to resolve all Keep Right and Osmose errors in the area.

Well, that's great, I'll just build a new city there...

Uh, no. Fake cities are vandalism.