The national flag of Aruba was adopted on 18 March 1976, along with the official anthem "Aruba Dushi Tera". The flag was partially designed by vexillologist Whitney Smith. On 18 March Aruba celebrates National Anthem and Flag Day, marked by local events across the island. It is also a significant day as it represents the acceptance by the Kingdom of the Netherlands of Aruba's right to an autonomous status.
The national flag of Romania is a tricolour. The Constitution of Romania states that "The flag of Romania is tricolour; the colours are arranged vertically in the following order from the flagpole: blue, yellow, red". The flag has a width-length ratio of 2:3; the proportions, shades of colour as well as the flag protocol were established by law in 1994, and extended in 2001.
The national flag of Poland consists of two horizontal stripes of equal width, the upper one white and the lower one red. The two colours are defined in the Polish constitution as the national colours. A variant of the flag with the national coat of arms in the middle of the white fess is legally reserved for official use abroad and at sea. A similar flag with the addition of a white eagle is used as the naval ensign of Poland.
The national flag of Norway is red with a navy blue Scandinavian cross bordered in white that extends to the edges of the flag; the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side in the style of the Dannebrog, the flag of Denmark.
The flag of the Republic of China, commonly called the flag of Taiwan, consists of a red field with a blue canton bearing a white disk surrounded by twelve triangles; said symbols symbolize the sun and rays of light emanating from it, respectively.
The flag of Bulgaria is a tricolour consisting of three equal-sized horizontal bands of white, green, and red. The flag was first adopted after the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, when Bulgaria gained de facto independence. The national flag at times was charged with the state emblem, especially during the communist era. The current flag was re-established with the 1991 Constitution of Bulgaria and was confirmed in a 1998 law.
The national flag of Brazil, is a blue disc depicting a starry sky spanned by a curved band inscribed with the national motto "Ordem e Progresso", within a yellow rhombus, on a green field. It was officially adopted on 19 November 1889 — four days after the Proclamation of the Republic, to replace the flag of the Empire of Brazil. The concept was the work of Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, with the collaboration of Miguel Lemos, Manuel Pereira Reis and Décio Villares.
The national flag of the Russian Federation is a tricolour of three equal horizontal fields: white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom. It was first raised in 1696, as an ensign for merchant ships under the Tsardom of Russia.
The national flag of the Union of the Comoros was designed in 2001 and officially adopted on 23 December of that year. It continues to display the crescent and four stars, which is a motif that has been in use in various forms since 1975 during the independence movement. In its constitution, the government of the Comoros refers to the insignia as l'emblème national, or the "national emblem", though it is understood to actually represent a flag.
The flag of Bolivia is the national flag of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. It was originally adopted in 1851. The state and war flag is a horizontal tricolor of red, yellow and green with the Bolivian coat of arms in the center. According to one source, the red stands for Bolivia's brave soldiers, while the green symbolizes fertility and yellow the nation's mineral deposits.
The national emblem of Cape Verde contains a circle within which is written the name of the nation in Portuguese. Within the circle are a torch and triangle, symbols of freedom and national unity. At the top of the shield is a plumbob, a symbol of righteousness; three chain links are at the bottom. This emblem replaces the earlier variant with the seashell that had been in use since independence. The current emblem was adopted in 1992.
The flag of Portugal is the national flag of the Portuguese Republic. It is a rectangular bicolour with a field divided into green on the hoist, and red on the fly. The lesser version of the national coat of arms of Portugal is centered over the colour boundary at equal distance from the upper and lower edges. Its presentation was done on 1 December 1910, after the downfall of the constitutional monarchy on 5 October 1910. However, it was only on 30 June 1911, that the official decree approving this flag as the official flag was published. This new national flag for the First Portuguese Republic, was selected by a special commission whose members included Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, João Chagas and Abel Botelho. The conjugation of the new field color, especially the use of green, was not traditional in the Portuguese national flag's composition and represented a radical republican-inspired change that broke the bond with the former monarchical flag. Since a failed republican insurrection on 31 January 1891, red and green had been established as the colours of the Portuguese Republican Party and its associated movements, whose political prominence kept growing until it reached a culmination period following the Republican revolution of 5 October 1910. In the ensuing decades, these colours were popularly propagandised as representing the hope of the nation (green) and the blood of those who died defending it (red), as a means to endow them with a more patriotic and dignified, therefore less political, sentiment.
The national flag of Kazakhstan, also called the Kazakh flag, was adopted on 4 June 1992, replacing the flag of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The flag was designed by Shaken Niyazbekov.
The national flag of Lithuania consists of a horizontal tricolour of yellow, green, and red. It was adopted on 25 April 1918 during Lithuania's first period of independence from 1918 to 1940, which ceased with the occupation first by the Soviet Union, and then by Nazi Germany (1941–1944). During the post-World War II Soviet occupation, from 1945 until 1989, the Soviet Lithuanian flag consisted first of a generic red Soviet flag with the name of the republic, then changed to the red flag with white and green bands at the bottom.
The national flag of Zambia was adopted upon independence on 24 October 1964, by the first Republican President Dr. Kenneth David Kaunda. Before that, Zambia was the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia and used a defaced Blue Ensign as its flag.
The flag of the Kirghiz SSR was adopted by the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Kirghiz SSR decreed by its Decree on 22 December 1952. The 1978 constitution of the Kirghiz SSR states that the ratio of the flag is 1:2 with the blue/white/blue stripes in the middle taking 1⁄3 of the flag height and the white stripes 1⁄20 of flag height. The red, blue and white colors were derived from the Pan-Slavic colours.
The Red Ensign of Singapore is a civil ensign used by privately owned, non-military ships that are registered in Singapore. The overall design of the ensign is a modification of the national flag, with the ratio of the width to the length extended to 1:2. The ensign was created by law in 1966. The use of this ensign is regulated by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA). According to the MPA, the Red Ensign is the only ensign to be used on Singaporean civilian ships, and the national flag is not an acceptable substitute. The ensign must be hoisted on all Singaporean ships on entering or leaving port.
Cape Verde–Guinea Bissau relations refers to the bilateral relationship between the Republic of Cape Verde and the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. Cape Verde is an island country about 900 km north-west of Guinea-Bissau, a coastal West African country. Both were colonies of the Portuguese Empire and they campaigned together for independence with a plan for unification, but the countries separated after 1980.
The 1980 Guinea-Bissau coup d'état was the bloodless military coup that took place in Guinea-Bissau on 14 November 1980, led by Prime Minister General João Bernardo Vieira. It led to the deposition of President Luís Cabral, who held the office since 1973, while the country's War of Independence was still ongoing.
