Inside the Federated States of Gapla, a self-declared micronation where volunteers across
continents are building the institutions of government before achieving international recognition.
The government has no capital city. Its ministers live on different continents. Every cabinet meeting begins not with the opening of parliament, but with the familiar sound of another participant joining a video call.
One logs in from Canada, another appears from Germany. A third joins from the Philippines. Their time zones rarely align, their cultures differ, and many have never met each other in person. Yet for the next hour, they debate constitutional amendments, discuss public policy, review government initiatives, and vote on matters affecting their country.
There lies only one complication.
Their country is not recognized by any member state of the United Nations.
It is called the Federated States of Gapla, a self-declared micronation founded on 26 February 2019. While it lacks international recognition, Gapla has spent the past several years constructing many of the institutions commonly associated with a modern state: a constitution, elected officials, ministries, a judiciary, and even an e-residency program. In an increasingly digital world where work, education, and communities transcend geography, Gapla poses an unusual question: Can a nation be built before it is officially recognized?
For founder Wyatt Baek, the project began not with politics but with imagination.
Picture (Collected from the official website of the Federated States of Gapla)
According to Gapla’s official history, Baek spent part of his childhood sketching fictional countries in notebooks, inventing governments and borders long before he understood international law. Years later, after discovering the global micronation movement, he revisited those childhood ideas and transformed them into what would become the Federated States of Gapla. What started as a personal creative exercise gradually evolved into an organized international community of volunteers committed to building a functioning government. Today, this vision is being carried forward by Gapla’s sixth president, Collin Esposo, who leads a government sustained by volunteers across continents. Together, they exhibit the continuing effort of imagining a nation into being.
Wyatte Baek (Founder, Speaker of The Federated States of Gapla) (Left)
Collin Esposo (6th President of The Federated States of Gapla) (Right)
The journey would eventually attract attention far beyond the micronation community. In an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Baek reflected on how unexpected the experience had become:
“ As a teenager, I founded my own country and was even invited to speak at the UN at 17. “
The statement captures the project’s unusual trajectory. While most teenagers are focused on school exams or university applications, Baek found himself discussing ideas of governance and nation-building on an international platform.
Unlike many micronations, which exist primarily as satire, artistic expression, or personal hobbies, Gapla presents itself as a long-term governance project. Its official website outlines a constitutional framework complete with executive, legislative, and judicial branches, alongside public offices, elections, and citizenship pathways. Volunteers contribute by drafting legislation, developing public services, maintaining digital infrastructure, and participating in democratic processes.
Rather than waiting for recognition before building institutions, Gapla has reversed the traditional sequence. It has chosen to build the machinery of government first.
Its ambitions extend beyond cyberspace. Gapla claims territory in Greater Danubia, a disputed area located between Croatia and Serbia. The micronation argues that the land constitutes terra nullius, a territory belonging to no sovereign state, and therefore may be lawfully claimed. That interpretation, however, is rejected by Croatia, Serbia, and the broader international community. Gapla remains unrecognized under international law, and its territorial claims carry no legal standing.
This legal reality places the project in an unusual position. It operates as a structured micronation with functioning institutions while remaining outside the formal system of sovereign states.
The concept of creating a country before obtaining recognition is unconventional, but the idea of questioning what makes a nation has precedents.
In 1973, former member of the British rock band The Beatles, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono declared the creation of Nutopia, a conceptual country established during Lennon’s legal dispute with United States immigration authorities. Nutopia rejected many of the conventions associated with nationhood. It claimed no territory, required no passports, and famously adopted four seconds of silence as its national anthem. It was less a country than an idea. A quiet challenge to the notion that borders alone define who we are. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the man who imagined such a place had once asked the world to imagine “there’s no countries.”
Gapla shares Nutopia’s willingness to rethink the meaning of statehood, but their approaches differ dramatically.
Yoko Ono displays Nutopia’s white handkerchief flag during the micronation’s declaration in New York on April 2, 1973. Picture (Collected.)
Where Nutopia was symbolic, Gapla is administrative.
Lennon’s experiment existed primarily as an idea. Gapla, by contrast, has invested years in building institutions. It has written a constitution, organized elections, appointed ministers, established courts, and created systems of governance intended to function over the long term. Rather than imagining a nation, it seeks to demonstrate how one might operate before achieving international recognition.
The contrast reflects broader changes brought about by the digital age. Businesses now operate across continents with distributed teams. Universities educate students online from thousands of kilometers away. Open-source software is developed by volunteers who may never meet in real life. Gapla applies the same logic to government, suggesting that civic participation itself, not geography, may become the foundation upon which communities organize themselves.
Whether that vision can ultimately succeed remains uncertain.
Without diplomatic recognition, Gapla’s passports hold no legal validity. Its territorial claim remains disputed, and its long-term aspiration to establish a permanent settlement faces considerable legal and political obstacles. For many observers, micronations remain idealistic experiments with limited practical significance.
Yet dismissing Gapla entirely risks overlooking what its volunteers have already achieved.
In just a few years, individuals separated by thousands of kilometers have built an active governmental framework, attracted participants from dozens of countries, and sustained a community devoted to institution-building rather than mere symbolism. Whether viewed as a future nation, a constitutional experiment, or an ambitious exercise in collaborative world-building, Gapla illustrates how digital communities continue to reshape ideas that once depended entirely on physical borders.
As another virtual cabinet meeting comes to an end, microphones fall silent one by one. Windows disappear from computer screens across multiple time zones. Within moments, the government’s headquarters exists only as empty desktops scattered around the world.
Tomorrow, the members will sign in again.
Their nation may not appear on most maps, and its future remains uncertain. But for the people who continue to write its laws, elect its leaders, and build its institutions, the work of creating a country has already begun.
Sources:
Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Mikrostaaten an der Donau” (Interview/profile featuring Wyatt Baek).
Official website of the Federated States of Gapla (history, constitution, government information, photographs).
John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1973 Declaration of Nutopia (historical records and contemporary reporting, photographs).
The official website of the Federated States of Gapla: https://my.gaplagov.org/