Flag of Mauritius

Mauritius’s flag is a plain rectangle divided into four equal horizontal bands of red, blue, yellow, and green. Red is at the top and green at the bottom. There is no star, crescent, coat of arms, inscription, or other emblem on the ordinary national flag, making the band sequence its main identifying feature.

Read the flag from top to bottom: red, blue, yellow, green. Each color appears once and occupies one-quarter of the total height. The sequence is part of the legal description, not a choice left to the illustrator. Reversing the flag puts green at the top and produces an incorrect standard display.

The normal national flag is three units wide and two units high, a width-to-height ratio of 3:2. The government overview expresses the same shape as 6:4. A height-to-width ratio of 2:3 also describes that rectangle. These notations agree once the order of the named dimensions is made clear.

Draw a rectangle with a width one and a half times its height. Divide the height into four equal parts and fill them red, blue, yellow, and green from top to bottom. No emblem needs to be positioned. Keep every boundary horizontal and every band the same height across the full width.

The 2022 Act specifies Pantone fashion home cotton references: red 18-1664TCX, blue 19-3939TCX, yellow 14-0957TCX, and green 17-6030TCX. These are the flag’s statutory textile color references. They should not be replaced with the coat of arms’ different Pantone values merely because both tables appear in the same national-symbols legislation.

The illustrations use red #D01C1F, blue #2D3359, yellow #F7B718, and green #008658, matching the current credited reference vector. These are digital reproduction values. The Act specifies textile references rather than these HEX numbers, so the screen palette should not be presented as a separate set of legally prescribed RGB codes.

Older government descriptions list British Standard numbers: red 0.005, blue 7.086, yellow 0.001, and green 0.010. The 2022 Act instead prints the TCX textile references. Keep these systems attached to their sources and dates. A historical code, a textile reference, and a screen HEX value are not interchangeable labels.

The law associates red with the struggle for freedom and independence, blue with the Indian Ocean, yellow with the new light of independence, and green with agriculture and the country’s year-round greenery. These are meanings stated in the Second Schedule, rather than an informal interpretation inferred only from the appearance of the colors.

The red band represents the struggle for freedom and independence. It is the uppermost quarter of the flag and introduces its national story. The statutory wording does not identify one particular battle or require the band to be explained solely as bloodshed; its meaning concerns the wider achievement of freedom and self-government.

Blue represents the Indian Ocean, in which Mauritius is situated. It is the second band, immediately below red and above yellow. This geographical meaning is stated explicitly in the national-symbols legislation. The band is not a map of territorial waters, and its thickness does not encode a distance, maritime boundary, or ocean depth.

The Act’s precise meaning is the new light of independence. Sunshine is a common explanatory association, but it should not displace that statutory wording in an exam answer or formal description. Yellow forms the third horizontal band, between blue and green, and represents the promise associated with the country’s independent future.

Green represents the agriculture of Mauritius and its greenery throughout the twelve months of the year. It is the lowest of the four bands. This symbolism refers to the country’s cultivated land and enduring green appearance; it does not mean that the flag is a statistical chart of the present economy.

The four-color national flag dates from independence on March 12, 1968. Official historical accounts recall its raising at noon at Champ de Mars in Port Louis as the Union Jack was lowered. Later Acts and technical rules formalized protection and specifications; they did not create a new independence date for the flag.

Gurudutt Moher is credited as the flag’s creator in a tribute recorded in the National Assembly’s April 26, 2022 proceedings. Contemporary Mauritian reporting also identifies him as the designer and records his posthumous MSK honor in March 2018. That design credit is separate from the later legal specification and reproduction of the flag.

Mauritius passed through Dutch, French, and British colonial periods before independence. The present four-band flag belongs to the independent nation, rather than to a colonial administration. Its ceremonial raising in 1968 marked the transition from British sovereignty, and the same basic design continued when Mauritius became a republic in 1992.

Mauritius became a republic on March 12, 1992, twenty-four years after independence. The red, blue, yellow, and green national flag continued in use. The two anniversaries share the same day and month but commemorate different events: independence in 1968 and the change from constitutional monarchy to republic in 1992.

The 2022 Act consolidated protection of Mauritius’s national symbols and placed the flag’s design, meanings, dimensions, colors, and mast-material requirements in its Second Schedule. It came into operation on June 1, 2022. It repealed the 2015 National Flag Act and revoked the 2016 technical regulations, while retaining the established four-band national design.

No. The 2024 amendment changes provisions concerning the arms and seal of Mauritius, including approved monochrome, grayscale, and line-art versions for specified government uses. It does not amend the national flag’s section or its Second Schedule. Its retrospective commencement provision also does not turn 2024 into a new flag-adoption year.

The Second Schedule specifies a mast flag of 1800 by 1200 millimeters, a desk or handheld flag of 150 by 100 millimeters, and a car flag of 300 by 200 millimeters. Their individual band heights are 300, 25, and 50 millimeters respectively. All three preserve the normal 3:2 rectangle.

The Act allows a tolerance of plus or minus two percent on the dimensions of the different colored sections and a one-millimeter tolerance for overlap between two colors. These allowances concern production accuracy. They do not change the ideal drawing into four deliberately unequal bands or authorize a different normal color sequence.

For the mast flag, the Second Schedule specifies one hundred percent polyester in a plain weave, with a mass per unit area of 150 plus or minus 5 grams per square meter. It also names test references. This material specification applies expressly to the mast flag, rather than automatically to every paper or digital representation.

The normal display keeps the bands horizontal, with red uppermost and green lowest. Preserve the complete rectangle and avoid placing lettering or an emblem on it. The Act addresses alteration and incorrect exhibition separately. Detailed ceremonial arrangements should follow the applicable Mauritian flag code and official instructions for the occasion.

Yes. Section 13 includes a national-event provision allowing flags or flag images to depart from the particular sizes and dimensions in Part II of the Second Schedule, provided they are displayed horizontally with red, blue, yellow, and green in order. The Act identifies Independence Day and Republic Day as national events.

The flag is lowered for mourning when the relevant official instruction calls for it. A Cabinet communiqué of September 9, 2022 directed half-mast display on public buildings from sunrise to sunset on Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral day and invited the private sector to follow. This was a specific dated direction, not a permanent daily timetable.

Yes. Section 24 of the Merchant Shipping Act requires a Mauritius ship to hoist the national flag on a signal from a government-service ship and when entering or leaving ports. The 2022 national-symbols Act also updates the shipping law’s flag definition. A maritime use of the national flag does not create a different four-color design.

No. The flag is the four-band rectangle. The arms, government seal, and national anthem are separate national symbols, each with its own provisions in the Act. The anthem is titled Motherland. Adding the arms, a dodo, a motto, or the anthem’s words to the ordinary flag would alter its plain national design.

No. Copyright status and national-symbol rules are separate. The Act restricts alteration, certain forms of exhibition, and commercial or advertising uses, including specified sales, without written authorization from the Prime Minister. A downloadable illustration supplies artwork; it does not itself supply the authorization required for a regulated use.

Mauritius has four equal horizontal bands and no emblem. Seychelles has five oblique bands, including white, spreading from the lower hoist. Mauritania has red top and bottom bands around green, with a gold crescent and star. Similar names or overlapping colors do not make these flags interchangeable; their structures are plainly different.

Mauritius’s flag emoji is 🇲🇺. It is formed from regional indicator M, U+1F1F2, followed by regional indicator U, U+1F1FA. Mauritania instead uses M and R, producing 🇲🇷. Emoji artwork varies by platform, so its tiny rendering is useful for identification but should not be treated as a precise textile-color or construction reference.

Avoid changing the red-blue-yellow-green order, drawing unequal bands, adding an emblem, or stretching the normal rectangle. Keep statutory textile references distinct from illustrative digital values. Historical dates also matter: 1968 is independence and flag adoption, 1992 is the republic, and the 2022 and 2024 Acts are later legislative milestones.