Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina

How to read it

The constitution leaves the country’s symbols to its Parliamentary Assembly, with the Presidency’s approval. The Assembly did not adopt a flag law at its session of 3 February 1998, so the next day the High Representative, Carlos Westendorp, put the Law on the Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina into force under his powers in Annex 10 of the Peace Agreement, provisionally until the Assembly adopted it. He took the design with the most votes in the House of Representatives (16 for, 16 abstentions, one against) and changed its blue and yellow to those of the Council of Europe’s flag. The law describes a blue flag with a yellow triangle right of centre and a row of white five-pointed stars running from the top edge parallel to the triangle’s left side, in a ratio of 1 to 2; its measurements are in an annex. The flag flew from the Presidency building a few hours later, outside the United Nations in New York on 6 February, and at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Nagano the day after. Radio Free Europe notes that the Parliament passed the flag law itself in 2001.

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The triangle and the stars

The flag law doesn’t say what either stands for. On the day of the decision, 4 February 1998, the High Representative’s spokesman said the flag stands for unity, the triangle for the three constituent peoples and the stars and blue for Europe, as the Office of the High Representative’s summary of that day’s news records. Radio Free Europe gives the triangle’s three corners as the shape of the country and the three constituent peoples, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.

The law doesn’t count the stars either. Store norske leksikon counts seven whole stars and two halves, the halves cut off by the top and bottom edges.

The flag of 1992 to 1998

The first flag after independence in 1992 was white with the coat of arms in the centre, Store norske leksikon says: a blue shield crossed diagonally by a white band, with three gold lilies on each side. They were the arms of the medieval kings of Bosnia, whose kingdom Stefan Tvrtko founded in 1377 and which lasted until 1463; the republic took them up on 4 May 1992. The present flag replaced it in 1998.

Telling it from Kosovo’s flag

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s and Kosovo’s flags are both blue, with a yellow or gold shape and white stars. Kosovo’s has a gold map of the country under an arc of six stars; Bosnia and Herzegovina’s has a yellow triangle with a straight diagonal line of stars beside it, and is twice as long as it is high, where Kosovo’s is 2 by 3.