flag: Djibouti

It points to Djibouti: the country, its people or a trip there.

Djibouti sits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, across the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb from Yemen, wedged between Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somaliland. It is about the size of Wales, mostly desert, with roughly a million people, most of them in the capital, Djibouti City. The two main communities are the Somali Issa and the Afar; French and Arabic are the official languages, and Somali and Afar are spoken at home. France ruled it from the 1880s until 27 June 1977, and the country still hosts French, American, Chinese, Japanese and other military bases, which is why many foreigners who send this flag are soldiers, sailors or aid workers posted there.

In messages the flag is usually a marker of identity. Djiboutians at home and in the diaspora, concentrated in France, Canada and Belgium, put it in profile names, pair it with the flag of the country they live in, and flood feeds with it around Independence Day. Football fans post it for the national team, nicknamed the Riverains de la Mer Rouge, the Shore-dwellers of the Red Sea. Travellers use it for Lake Assal, the salt lake below sea level, and for whale-shark season in the Gulf of Tadjoura. Received from a friend, it almost always means they are talking about the country, not sending a coded message.

What is on the Djibouti flag?

Two stripes, light blue over green, a white triangle at the pole, and a red star.

Each part stands for something. Light blue is the sky and sea, and by tradition the Issa; green is the land, and the Afar, so the two bands show the two peoples sharing one country. The white triangle is peace, and the red five-pointed star inside it is unity, with red also recalling the blood shed for independence. The design grew out of the flag of the LPAI, the Ligue populaire africaine pour l'indépendance, the movement that led the country out of French rule, and was hoisted for the first time on independence day in 1977.

Emoji artwork keeps the design faithful, so the flag looks the same on any phone that shows flags at all. The only real surprise is the fallback: devices without flag pictures, above all Windows PCs, show the country code DJ in two boxed letters. That is the same character, not a typo or an abbreviation for anything else.