refer to them? CGC There are a number. Semi-autonomous countries such as French Polynesia/Maohi Nui in the Pacific, comes immediately to mind.  In 1947, France unilaterally ended its transmission of information on the dependencies under its administration. The following year, in 1948,  the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on the relevant colonial powers to explain why they were no longer fulfilling their U.N. Charter obligation to provide on the dependencies. The French replied in 1949 that it intended to conduct some colonial reforms, and this was apparently sufficient enough among the U.N. member States of that early period not to press the issue further. The French, thus, no longer provided information, and by the time the new list of non self-governing territories was published by the U.N. in 1963 the French dependencies of Ma'ohi Nui/French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna had been omitted. This procedure was in contrast to the Danish, Dutch and Americans who proceeded to have their dependencies de-listed through a U.N. General Assembly resolution following significant U.N. debate. CAR Are there 'dependencies in the periphery' in the Caribbean as well? CGC For sure. We have already spoken of Puerto Rico . The fragmentation of the five-island semi-autonomous country formerly known as the Netherlands Antilles in 2010 is another Caribbean example where five new peripheral dependencies were created. The two semi-autonomous countries of Curacao and Sint Maarten emerging from this dismantlement resulted in lesser autonomous models than existed when the islands were one country.