As of May 2016, how many doubly landlocked countries are there in the world?

A country is "doubly landlocked" or "double-landlocked" when it is surrounded entirely by one or more landlocked countries (requiring the crossing of at least two national borders to reach a coastline). There are currently (May 2016) only two such countries: Liechtenstein(surrounded by Switzerland and Austria) and Uzbekistan (surrounded by Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan).

There were no doubly landlocked countries from the Unification of Germany in 1871 until the end of World War I. Liechtenstein bordered the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had an Adriatic coastline, and Uzbekistan was then part of the Russian Empire, which had both ocean and sea access. With the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and creation of an independent, landlocked Austria, Liechtenstein became doubly landlocked country until 1938. Uzbekistan, which had been absorbed by the new Soviet Union upon the toppling of the Russian throne in 1917, gained its independence with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 and became the second doubly landlocked country.

However, Uzbekistan's doubly landlocked status depends on resolution of the Caspian Sea's status dispute: some countries claim that the Caspian Sea should be considered as a real sea, and in this case, Uzbekistan is only a simple landlocked country, because both Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have access to the Caspian Sea from their neighbors.