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About this data

Which countries are members of the International Whaling Commission?
Whether the country is currently a member or former member of the IWC. If the country has never been a member, it is classified as a non-member.
Source
International Whaling Commission (2026) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 7, 2026
Next expected update
June 2027
Date range
1948–2025

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

International Whaling Commission – IWC Member Countries by Year

Retrieved on
June 7, 2026
Retrieved from
https://iwc.int/commission/members
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Whaling Commission (2026). Member Countries by Year.
Retrieved on
June 7, 2026
Retrieved from
https://iwc.int/commission/members
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Whaling Commission (2026). Member Countries by Year.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

The status refers to the status of the country on the 31.12. of that year. If the country has left during the year it is already considered a former member for that year.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Which countries are members of the International Whaling Commission?”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Fiona Spooner, and Max Roser (2022) - “Biodiversity”. Data adapted from International Whaling Commission. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260615-183102/grapher/iwc-members.html [online resource] (archived on June 15, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Whaling Commission (2026) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Whaling Commission (2026) – processed by Our World in Data. “Which countries are members of the International Whaling Commission?” [dataset]. International Whaling Commission, “IWC Member Countries by Year” [original data]. Retrieved June 15, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260615-183102/grapher/iwc-members.html (archived on June 15, 2026).

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