A desert the size of a small country that no nation will claim

Bir Tawil sits unclaimed because Britain drew two conflicting borders, one in 1899 and another in 1902, leaving this barren trapezoid outside both. Claiming it would mean forfeiting a stronger claim to the far more valuable, coastal Hala'ib Triangle nearby, which both Egypt and Sudan actively want instead. Bir Tawil is one of the very few places on land left as genuine terra nullius, unclaimed by any government.

— Alastair Bonnett, Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies — 2014, chapter on borders and no man's lands
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