Central America

The isthmus joining North and South America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama, under the UN geoscheme's own placement of Mexico in this subregion rather than treated as a stand-alone bloc with the United States and Canada. Narrower and more volcanically active than the South American continent it connects to at the Panama-Colombia border, and separate from the Caribbean's island states just offshore.