somaliland is a self-proclaimed country, formerly part of somalia. internationally, it’s not recognized, and the somalian government considers it part of its country. however, it was added to musicbrainz in 2020. it is not available to select as a release country, nor is a flag included (even though they have an official flag). i don’t want this to be a political discussion, and i, as an american, am really not able to have an opinion on the countries themselves. i just wonder, why isn’t somaliland a release country?
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I think you answered your own question. 
The strict answer is “because it’s not in the release_country table”. There’s really no other requirement AFAICT. Whether it should be a release country is debatable. We do have Kosovo there, but that does have significantly more international recognition, even if it’s still somewhat disputed. We do not have “Russian” separatist regions in Georgia nor Moldova. For now, I think it makes sense to keep assigning those to Somalia, although given my understanding of the region is that Somaliland is a more-or-less functioning state and Somalia isn’t at all, it’s possible Somaliland has more of a music industry than the rest of Somalia and we will have to revisit this eventually.
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