A 21-year-old from Dover, Kent, who declared himself president of his own country back in 2019 just picked up an award at a United Nations gala in New York — even though he's currently banned from setting foot on the land he claims to govern. Daniel Jackson founded the Free Republic of Verdis on a sliver of unclaimed forest along the Danube River, and on October 9 he was recognized for the micronation's humanitarian work in Côte d'Ivoire.
Jackson's award was presented by the Institute of Public Policy and Diplomacy Research, according to the Mirror, which reports the honor recognized Verdis's efforts to co-fund the rebuilding of bathrooms and water wells at a preschool. Those details on the ground in Yopougon, Côte d'Ivoire, come from Verdis's own government website, which states the project was co-funded by the Verdisian government and that the micronation hopes to keep building its relationship with the country. Per the New York Post, Jackson gave an acceptance speech at the event and described it as overwhelming.
“It definitely was intense. It was a very interesting experience. There were quite a lot of high end people there. It was very nerve wrecking,” Jackson said, according to the Post. He added that the scale of the recognition still catches him off guard: “Being only 21 years old I am still sort of getting used to this experience of turning up to these events with such interesting and influential people.”
From a Teenage Experiment to a Government in Exile
Jackson says the whole idea started as a lark when he was just 14. “Verdis was an idea I had when I was 14; it was just a bit of an experiment at first with a few mates,” he told Metro. He and his friends had noticed that patches of land along the Danube were left unclaimed by either Croatia or Serbia following a border dispute, per the Post's reporting, and on May 30, 2019, Jackson declared one such parcel, officially mapped as Pocket-3, the Free Republic of Verdis, Metro reports.
The territory itself is an uninhabited stretch of forest that hasn't belonged to any nation since the breakup of Yugoslavia, according to the Guardian. Jackson described the feeling of standing on it in starker terms: “To the naked eye it is just a lot of forest, but when you realise that you are in a country you have created it is magical,” he said, per the Post. Reports vary slightly on the exact size, with the Mirror putting the area at 0.501 square kilometers, or around 125 acres, while CNN has described it as a 124-acre patch of land. Either figure, per Metro, would make Verdis the second-smallest country in the world behind Vatican City, if it were treated as a country at all — which officially, it is not.
Despite the lack of recognition, Jackson built out the trappings of a functioning state. Verdis has created passports, a flag, merchandise, a full cabinet, laws and a coat of arms, the Mirror reports, and the Post notes the project also opened two embassies, one in Dover and one in Novi Sad, Serbia. The micronation lists English, Croatian and Serbian as official languages and uses the euro as its currency, according to the Post, and Jackson has gone all-in on the project, giving up his day job designing Roblox worlds to work on Verdis full-time.
Banned From His Own Claimed Soil
The hardest part of building a country, it turns out, is actually reaching it. Jackson is banned from Croatia, and according to the Mirror, attempts to settle the territory have so far been unsuccessful. Jackson claims Croatian authorities installed cameras along Verdis's coastline specifically to prevent access from the Serbian side, the outlet reports — a claim that reflects his own account of the situation rather than an independently confirmed one.
Jackson now describes Verdis as operating as a government in exile. “We are still thriving. We are making a lot of progress, but we are still blockaded,” he said, according to the Post. He was more pointed about the standoff with Croatian officials in another remark: “Croatia are still quite tough on us. They have really cracked down regarding Verdis government officials being able to enter Verdis. They are very much watching us.” Even so, Jackson says the movement hasn't paused. “We are carrying out Verdis' values even while we continue to operate in exile,” he said, adding, “We are still working towards it,” and that he hopes the blockade will eventually lift.
There has been some diplomatic headway, at least with Serbia: the Mirror reports Jackson has been accepted for Serbian citizenship, a step that could give him legal footing closer to the territory even without resolving the dispute with Croatia. Jackson, who identifies as both British and Australian according to the Post, remains the face of the project, though he's not the only Verdisian official drawing international attention these days.
A UN Stage and a Flood of Would-Be Citizens
Verdis was invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly Youth Mobilisation Segment on October 9, where the micronation's Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Jeffrey Li, laid out the group's past efforts and future plans, the Mirror reports. Jackson called the moment a milestone for the project. “Having the opportunity to have my colleague speak directly at the UNGA youth forum was amazing,” he said, per the Post, adding that the UN trips consistently pay off: “Every time we go to New York we always get a decent amount of dialogue and connections.” Li's appearance, the Post notes, opened up further connections for Verdis around youth involvement and aid work.
The interest in Verdis extends well beyond diplomatic circles. The micronation receives more than 1,000 emails a month from people asking to become citizens, according to KHQ, and the Guardian reports Verdis has fielded 15,000 citizenship applications total, accepting 400 of them. Verdis restricts how many citizens it accepts because of its limited land area, the Post notes, and public curiosity didn't really take off until 2023, when Jackson began making trips to the territory with supporters, according to the Guardian.
Jackson isn't the first person to try this particular move along the Danube. In 2015, Czech politician Vit Jedlička claimed a seven-square-kilometer patch of the same disputed riverland for his own project, Liberland, according to CNN. Liberland, proclaimed in April 2015 by Jedlička and Jana Markovicova, remains uninhabited and has never been formally recognized by any country, per RFE/RL, which also reports that Croatia initially blocked access to the territory and detained visitors, including Jedlička himself, over alleged border violations. For now, Verdis remains reachable only by boat from Osijek, the Post notes — assuming, unlike its own president, you're allowed to get there at all.
