Flag of Comoros

What the flag of Comoros looks like

The flag of the Union of the Comoros has a ratio of 3:5. It is made of four equal horizontal stripes: yellow at the top, then white, red and blue at the bottom. At the hoist is a green isosceles triangle whose point reaches toward the fly. Inside it is a white crescent, which opens toward the right, and four white five-pointed stars set inside the crescent.

The number four appears twice in the design, in the four stripes and in the four stars. Together with the green triangle, the flag uses five colors.

Comoros flag meaning and symbolism

The four stripes and four stars stand for the four main islands of the Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean: Grande Comore (Ngazidja), Mohéli (Mwali), Anjouan (Ndzuwani) and Mayotte (Maore). Each stripe color is connected to an island: yellow with Mohéli, white with Mayotte, red with Anjouan and blue with Grande Comore. Mayotte is claimed by the Comoros but remains a French department, so its star and stripe keep it present on the flag.

The green triangle and the crescent are symbols of Islam, the religion of nearly all Comorians. Green is also a traditional color of Islam.

History of the Comoros flag

The islands were a French colony before independence in 1975. The first official flag, designed by Suzanne Gauthier in 1963, was green with a white crescent and four stars. After independence the flag changed several times: under Ali Soilih in 1975 two thirds of it became red, in 1978 it returned to plain green with a central crescent, and in 1996 white Arabic inscriptions reading Muhammad and Allah were added. The crescent and four stars stayed throughout.

Political tension between islands, including separatist movements on Anjouan and Mohéli, led to a new constitution in 2001 that turned the country into a union of autonomous islands. A new flag was approved by referendum, designed to show all four islands. The Comoros flag as it is now was officially adopted on 23 December 2001, and it has been used ever since. The earlier, mostly green designs are no longer official.

The flag is shown as an emoji on the Comoros flag emoji page, and other African flags can be found under Africa.