Flag of the Maldives

How to read it

Article 12 of the Constitution of the Maldives (2008) describes a white crescent in the centre of a green rectangle surrounded by a red border, and its Schedule 3 fixes the rest. The flag is two thirds as high as it is long, and the red border is a quarter of the flag’s height wide. The crescent is drawn from two arcs, each with a radius of a third of the green rectangle’s height, centred on the rectangle’s middle line at nine sixteenths and five eighths of its length from the side nearer the staff. The colours are British Admiralty codes: T 1143 green, T 1144 red and T 1145 white for nylon worsted bunting (T 817 A, T 818 A and T 819 A for other bunting). Store norske leksikon dates the official adoption to 25 July 1965, and credits the design to Abdul Majeed Didi, sultan from 1944 to 1952.

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From a plain red flag to the green panel

The oldest known flags of the Maldives were plain red, Store norske leksikon says, and until 1796 they had the shape of two triangles, like Nepal’s flag. In 1903 a narrow band of black and white diagonal stripes was added by the pole, and in 1926 the green rectangle and the white crescent. The striped band was dropped when the country became independent of Britain on 26 July 1965.

The president’s flag

The president flies the national flag with a star added beside the crescent in the green, the flag the sultan used before the republic, according to Store norske leksikon. The national flag itself has the crescent alone.