Eritrea flag 10 x 15 cm

Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea. Its size is just under 118,000 km² with an estimated population of 4,400,000. The capital is Asmara.

Italy conquered Eritrea and the Italian government formally consolidated it into a colony on January 1, 1890. In 1936 it became a province of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana), along with Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland. The British expelled the Italians in 1941 and continued to administer the territory under a UN mandate until 1951 when Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia as per UN resolution 390(A) adopted in December 1950.

Increasing unrest and resistance in Eritrea against the federation with Ethiopia eventually led to a decision by the Ethiopian government to annex Eritrea as its 14th province in 1962. An Eritrean independence movement formed in the early 1960s which later erupted into a 31-year long war against successive Ethiopian governments that ended in 1991. Following a UN supervised referendum in Eritrea dubbed UNOVER in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence from Ethiopia, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993. Eritrea is a single-party state - whilst its constitution, adopted in 1997, stipulates that the state is a presidential republic with a unicameral parliamentary democracy, it has yet to be implemented. According to the government[citation needed], this is due to the prevailing border conflict with Ethiopia which began in May 1998. English is also used in all of the government's international communication and is the language of instruction in all education beyond the fifth grade.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea

The current flag of Eritrea was adopted on December 5, 1995, and uses the basic layout of the flag of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, with the wreath with upright olive branch symbol derived from the 1952 flag.

The flag is dominated by a red triangle extending from the hoist to the fly with complementary green and blue triangles above and below. Green stands for the fertility of the country respectively for agriculture; blue stands for the ocean and red for the blood lost in the fight for freedom. In the red triangle a yellow wreath symbol with 14 leaves on each side derived from the 1952 flag replaces the yellow star of the EPLF flag. The use of triangles is also important, because reading the flag from left to right it is important to note that the red shrinks which represents that in the end Eritrea will see peace and blood will no longer be spilled for the nation.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Eritrea