The South Orkney Islands are a group of islands in the Southern Ocean, about north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and south-west of South Georgia Island. They have a total area of about . The islands are claimed both by Britain (as part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962, previously as a Falkland Islands Dependency) and by Argentina (as part of Argentine Antarctica). Under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, sovereignty claims are held in abeyance.