The Somalian flag was designed in 1954 to represent the Somali ethnic group, which is found in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya as well as British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland and Djibouti.
The blue field was originally a reference to the flag of the United Nations, in recognition of the UN's role in Somalia's transition to independence, beginning in 1949. Nowadays it officially represents the sea and the sky. (Somaila borders the Indian Ocean to the south-east and the Gulf of Aden to the north.) The white star represents the separation of the Somali people by the colonial powers, each of its five points representing one of the Somali regions.
© Haydn Thompson 2017