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A National Olympic Committee (NOC) is a national constituent of the worldwide Olympic movement. Subject to the controls of the International Olympic Committee, NOCs are responsible for organizing their people's participation in the Olympic Games. They may nominate cities within their respective areas as candidates for future Olympic Games. NOCs also promote the development of athletes and training of coaches and officials at a national level within their geographies.
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National Olympic Committees
As of 2016, there are 206 NOCs: Each of the 193 member states of the United Nations; United Nations observer state Palestine; the Cook Islands, a state in free association with New Zealand whose capacity to participate in international organizations has been recognized by the United Nations Secretariat; and two states with limited recognition, Kosovo and Taiwan (designated as Chinese Taipei by the IOC).
There are also nine dependent territories with NOCs:
Prior to 1996, rules for recognising separate countries within the IOC were not as strict as those within the United Nations, which allowed these territories to field teams separately from their sovereign state. Following an amendment to the Olympic Charter in 1996, NOC recognition can only be granted after recognition as an independent state by the international community. Since the rule does not apply retroactively, the dependent territories which were recognised before the rule change are allowed to continue sending separate teams to the Olympics, while the Faroe Islands and Macau send their own Paralympic teams.
The states which thus qualify to participate in the future are the Vatican City, a UN observer state, and Niue, a state in free association with New Zealand like the Cook Islands. Other disputed states face obstacles to being recognized by the IOC. Dependent territories such as Curaçao, the Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Macau and New Caledonia can no longer be recognised by the IOC. Athletes from those territories can only participate in the Olympics as part of their parent nation's national team.
List
This section lists the current:
ANOC members are eligible to enter the Olympic Games,
Some National Olympic Committees who are members of a continental Olympic Association but not ANOC members compete in continental-level and subregional tournaments. These committees, however, are not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games.
The five continental associations are:
IOC runs the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games as competitions in which all IOC-recognised NOCs can participate. Each continent also runs its own championships for their members:
While not a continental union in itself, the Union of Arab National Olympic Committees (UANOC) organises multi-sport events between Arabic-speaking countries. All 22 national governing bodies that form UANOC are also members of both AOC and are eligible to send athletes to either the African or Asian Games. National Olympic Committees from UANOC member countries are noted in the list below.
Africa (ANOCA)
1: National Olympic Committee is a member of UANOC
Asia (OCA)
1: National Olympic Committee is a member of UANOC
2: National Olympic Committee is a member of OCA but not an ANOC member
3: Official name used by IOC, ANOC and OCA for Republic of China (Taiwan)
Europe (EOC)
1: Israel was a member of OCA but left in 1981, it joined the EOC in 1994
Oceania (ONOC)
1: National Olympic Committee is an associate member of ONOC but not an ANOC member
List of NOCs by recognition date
Below is a chronological list of the 206 NOCs recognized by the International Olympic Committee, since its foundation in 1894. Many of these committees were founded many years before their official recognition, while others were immediately accepted after being founded.
Only extant states are listed. Former states (e.g. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Netherlands Antilles, etc.), are not listed, only the current states derived from them: for example, the Czech Olympic Committee representing Bohemia was created and recognized in 1899. It was later transformed into the Czechoslovak Olympic Committee, and, after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, was re-recognized in 1993.
Divisions
The NOCs are all members of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), which is also split among five continental associations:
See the article for each continental association for the complete lists of all NOCs.
Unrecognized National Olympic Committees
The Macau Sports and Olympic Committee was founded in 1987 and has attempted to enroll to the IOC since its foundation, but is still not officially recognized and thus no athlete has participated in the Olympic Games under the name "Macau, China". It has, however, participated in the Paralympic Games.
The Faroe Islands have a recognised National Paralympic Committee.
Other existing countries/regions with unrecognized Olympic committees: Catalonia, Gibraltar, French Polynesia, Niue, Somaliland, New Caledonia, Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus, Abkhazia, Native Americans, the Northern Mariana Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, and Turks & Caicos Islands.
South Ossetia intends to establish a National Olympic Committee, and representatives from the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic take part in Armenia’s National Olympic Committee.