Navassa Island (Lanavaz; l'île de la Navasse, sometimes la Navase) is a small uninhabited island in the Caribbean Sea. Located northeast of Jamaica, south of Cuba, and 40 nmi west of Jérémie on the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti, it is subject to an ongoing territorial dispute between Haiti and the United States, which administers the island through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The U.S. has claimed the island, as an appurtenance, since 1857, based on the Guano Islands Act of 1856. Haiti's claim over Navassa goes back to the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 that established French possessions on mainland Hispaniola from Spain, as well as other specifically named nearby islands. However, there was no mention of Navassa in the treaty detailing terms. Haiti's 1801 constitution claimed several nearby islands by name, among which Navassa was not listed, but also laid claim to "other adjacent islands", which Haiti maintains included Navassa. The U.S. claim to the island, first made in 1857, asserts that Navassa was not included among the unnamed “other adjacent islands” in the Haitian Constitution of 1801. Since the Haitian Constitution of 1874, Haiti has explicitly named "la Navase" as one of the territories it claims, and maintains that it has been claimed as part of Haiti continuously since 1801. Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, who was a member of the French Parliament best known for his publications on Saint-Domingue, referred to "la Navasse" as a "small island between Saint-Domingue and Jamaica" in 1798.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) code for the island, as part of the US Minor Outlying Islands, is ISO 3166-2:UM-76.
