terra nullius

plural terrae nullius

1. countableuncountableinternational lawEmpty land; land not legally belonging to anyone; no man's land.

   When Aboriginal people showed up which they inevitably did they had to be subjected, incarcerated or eradicated: to keep the myth of terra nullius alive.

   1993, Patrick Dodson, ‘Welcome Speech to Conference on the Position of Indigenous People in National Constitutions’, in Heiss & Minter, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin 2008, p. 146

   3 more examples

   Following the breakup of former Yugoslavia in 1991, seven new states emerged in the region with many border disputes that left some territories as terrae nullius, or no-man’s lands.

   2015 May 24, “Kingdom of Enclava: new micro-nation settles for spot on Croat-Serb border”, in The Guardian, sourced from Agence France-Presse, archived from the original on 22 Nov 2021

   In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius – “nobody’s land” – and there is nothing else quite like it on the planet. […] Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims – but Bir Tawil is not any more a “no man’s land” than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies and the British government that supported them to justify the appropriation of territory from indigenous people.

   2016 March 3, Jack Shenker, “Welcome to the land that no country wants”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 06 Apr 2020

   This overgrown and unremarkable little swamp is terra nullius. Under vaguely defined and loosely enforced international law, the first person who claims sovereignty over terra nullius can have it.

   2017, Jamie Bartlett, chapter 8, in Radicals, William Heinemann, →ISBN