Flag of Yemen

How to read it

Article 156 of the constitution of the Republic of Yemen says the national flag is made of three colours, starting from the top: red, white and black. The flag law, Presidential Council Decision by Law No. 1 of 1990 on the national flag, sets the shape: a rectangle whose height is two thirds of its length (2:3), made of three rectangles of equal size, each the length of the flag. The flag was adopted when the two Yemeni states united in 1990, the Norwegian encyclopedia Store norske leksikon notes.

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Telling it from Egypt’s flag

Several Arab flags share these stripes. Radio Dabanga describes Sudan’s flag as based on the Arab Liberation Flag, shared by Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Palestine. Egypt’s flag has the same red, white and black stripes in the same order, with the golden eagle of Saladin in the middle of the white, under article 223 of Egypt’s constitution and its flag law of 2014. Yemen’s white stripe is empty.

The flags before 1990

Before unification, the encyclopedia writes, North Yemen had a flag like the present one with a green star on the white stripe, and South Yemen had a blue triangle at the pole with a red star.

What the 1990 flag law sets

The flag flies on the buildings of the Presidential Council and the residence of its chairman, on government buildings, on Yemeni embassies, legations and consulates abroad, and on ships and aircraft of Yemeni nationality; private buildings may fly it on holidays and at public and private celebrations. Government buildings fly it from sunrise to sunset on official holidays and public occasions, and it is lowered to half-mast only when official mourning is declared.