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The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is a unitary sovereign and archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Situated in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. Bounded by the South China Sea on the west, the Philippine Sea on the east and the Celebes Sea on the southwest, the Philippines shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Vietnam to the west, Palau to the east and Malaysia and Indonesia to the south.

The Philippines' location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and close to the equator makes the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons, but also endows it with abundant natural resources and some of the world's greatest biodiversity. The Philippines has an area of 300,000 km², according to the Philippines Statistical Authority and the WorldBank and, as of 2015, had a population of at least 100 million. As of January 2018, it was the eighth-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. Approximately 10 million additional Filipinos lived overseas, comprising one of the world's largest diasporas. Multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. In prehistoric times, Negritos were some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants. They were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Exchanges with Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Islamic nations occurred. Then, various competing maritime states were established under the rule of Datus, Rajahs, Sultans or Lakans.

It is a founding member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the East Asia Summit. It also hosts the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank. The Philippines is considered to be an emerging market and a newly industrialized country, which has an economy transitioning from being based on agriculture to one based more on services and manufacturing. Along with East Timor, the Philippines is one of Southeast Asia's predominantly Christian nations.

Geography

The Philippines is an archipelago composed of about 7,641 islands with a total land area, including inland bodies of water, of 300,000 square kilometers. The 36,289 kilometers of coastline makes it the country with the fifth longest coastline in the world. It is located between 116° 40', and 126° 34' E longitude and 4° 40' and 21° 10' N latitude and is bordered by the Philippine Sea to the east, the South China Sea to the west, and the Celebes Sea to the south. The island of Borneo is located a few hundred kilometers southwest and Taiwan is located directly to the north. The Moluccas and Sulawesi are located to the south-southwest and Palau is located to the east of the islands.

Most of the mountainous islands are covered in tropical rainforest and volcanic in origin. The highest mountain is Mount Apo. It measures up to 2,954 meters above sea level and is located on the island of Mindanao. The Galathea Depth in the Philippine Trench is the deepest point in the country and the third deepest in the world. The trench is located in the Philippine Sea.

The longest river is the Cagayan River in northern Luzon. Manila Bay, upon the shore of which the capital city of Manila lies, is connected to Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the Philippines, by the Pasig River. Subic Bay, the Davao Gulf, and the Moro Gulf are other important bays. The San Juanico Strait separates the islands of Samar and Leyte but it is traversed by the San Juanico Bridge.

Situated on the western fringes of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Philippines experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity. The Benham Plateau to the east in the Philippine Sea is an undersea region active in tectonic subduction. Around 20 earthquakes are registered daily, though most are too weak to be felt. The last major earthquake was the 1990 Luzon earthquake

Climate

The Philippines has a tropical maritime climate that is usually hot and humid. There are three seasons: tag-init or tag-araw, the hot dry season or summer from March to May; tag-ulan, the rainy season from June to November; and tag-lamig, the cool dry season from December to February. The southwest monsoon (from May to October) is known as the Habagat, and the dry winds of the northeast monsoon (from November to April), the Amihan. Temperatures usually range from 21 °C to 32 °C although it can get cooler or hotter depending on the season. The coolest month is January; the warmest is May.

The average yearly temperature is around 26.6 °C. In considering temperature, location in terms of latitude and longitude is not a significant factor. Whether in the extreme north, south, east, or west of the country, temperatures at sea level tend to be in the same range. Altitude usually has more of an impact. The average annual temperature of Baguio at an elevation of 1,500 meters above sea level is 18.3 °C, making it a popular destination during hot summers.

Sitting astride the typhoon belt, most of the islands experience annual torrential rains and thunderstorms from July to October, with around nineteen typhoons entering the Philippine area of responsibility in a typical year and eight or nine making landfall. Annual rainfall measures as much as 5,000 millimeters in the mountainous east coast section but less than 1,000 millimeters in some of the sheltered valleys. The wettest known tropical cyclone to impact the archipelago was the July 1911 cyclone, which dropped over 1,168 millimeters of rainfall within a 24-hour period in Baguio. Bagyo is the local term for a tropical cyclone in the Philippines. Natural hazards often cause lots of casualties in the Philippines. However, the government has lately been trying to manage and reduce disaster risks through innovative legislation

Demographics

The population of the Philippines increased from 1990 to 2008 by approximately 28 million, a 45% growth in that time frame. The first official census in the Philippines was carried out in 1877 and recorded a population of 5,567,685.

It is estimated that half of the population resides on the island of Luzon. The 3.21% population growth rate between 1995 and 2000 decreased to an estimated 1.95% for the 2005–2010 period, but remains a contentious issue. The population's median age is 22.7 years with 60.9% aged from 15 to 64 years old. Life expectancy at birth is 69.4 years, 73.1 years for females and 65.9 years for males. Poverty incidence also significantly dropped to 21.6% in 2015 from 25.2% in 2012.

Since the liberalization of United States immigration laws in 1965, the number of people in the United States having Filipino ancestry has grown substantially. In 2007 there were an estimated 12 million Filipinos living overseas.

According to the official count the population of the Philippines hit 100 million at the time of midnight on July 27, 2014, making it the 12th country to reach this number.

The Philippine population will continue to increase throughout 2018 and is projected to reach around 107,190,081 by Dec. 31, 2018, based on projections made by the Commission on Population using the latest population census of 2015 (Philippine Statistics Authority)

Languages

Ethnologue lists 186 individual languages in the Philippines, 182 of which are living languages, while 4 no longer have any known speakers. Most native languages are part of the Philippine branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is itself a branch of the Austronesian language family. The only language not classified as an Austronesian language are the various Spanish-based creole varieties collectively called Chavacano.

Filipino and English are the official languages of the country. Filipino is a standardized version of Tagalog, spoken mainly in Metro Manila and other urban regions. Both Filipino and English are used in government, education, print, broadcast media, and business. In most towns, the local indigenous language is spoken. The Philippine constitution provides for the promotion of Spanish and Arabic on a voluntary and optional basis, although neither are used on as wide a scale as in the past. However, Spanish loanwords are still present today in many of the indigenous Philippine languages. Spanish, which was widely used as a lingua franca in the late nineteenth century, has since declined greatly in use, but is experiencing a revival due to government promotion, while Arabic is mainly used in Islamic schools in Mindanao. A theory that the indigenous scripts of Sumatra, Sulawesi and the Philippines are descended from an early form of the Gujarati script was presented at the 2010 meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Nineteen regional languages act as auxiliary official languages used as media of instruction: Aklanon, Bikol, Cebuano, Chavacano, Hiligaynon, Ibanag, Ilocano, Ivatan, Kapampangan, Kinaray-a, Maguindanao, Maranao, Pangasinan, Sambal, Surigaonon, Tagalog, Tausug, Waray, and Yakan. Other indigenous languages such as, Cuyonon, Ifugao, Itbayat, Kalinga, Kamayo, Kankanaey, Masbateño, Romblomanon, Malay, and several Visayan languages are prevalent in their respective provinces.

Languages not indigenous to the islands are also taught in select schools. Mandarin is used in Chinese schools catering to the Chinese Filipino community. Islamic schools in Mindanao teach Modern Standard Arabic in their curriculum. French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish are taught with the help of foreign linguistic institutions. The Department of Education began teaching the Malay languages of Indonesian and Malaysian in 2013.

Religion

The Philippines is an officially secular state, although Christianity is the dominant faith. Census data from 2010 found that about 80.58% of the population professed Catholicism. Around 37% regularly attend Mass and 29% identify as very religious. Protestants are 10.8% of the total population, mostly endorsing evangelical Protestant denominations that were introduced by American missionaries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, they are heavily concentrated in Northern Luzon and Southern Mindanao. The Philippine Independent Church is a notable independent Catholic denomination. Iglesia ni Cristo is a notable Unitarian and Restorationist denomination in the country and are mostly concentrated at Central Luzon.

Islam is the second largest religion. The Muslim population of the Philippines was reported as 5.57% of the total population according to census returns in 2010. A recent statistic shown by the National Commission of Muslim Filipinos (NCMF) on 2012 which stated that about 10,700,000 or 11% of the Filipinos are Muslims. Some Muslim scholars argue that census taken in 2000 is significantly undercounted the number of Muslims because of security concerns and hostility of the inhabitants to government personnel in Muslim-majority areas, thus lead difficulty in getting accurate data of the Muslim population in the country. The majority of Muslims live in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Most practice Sunni Islam under the Shafi'i school.

An unknown percentage of irreligion in the Philippines because there is no official statistic of it but it may be form as high as 20% of the population. The Philippine Atheists and Agnostics Society (PATAS) is a nonprofit organization for the public understanding of atheism and agnosticism in the Philippines which educate society, and eliminate myths and misconceptions about atheism and agnosticism.

An estimated 2% of the total population practice Philippine traditional religions, whose practices and folk beliefs are often syncretized with Christianity and Islam. Buddhism is practiced by around 2% of the population, and is concentrated among Filipinos of Chinese descent. The remaining population is divided between a number of religious groups, including Hindus, Jews, and Baha'is.