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Antarctica

Last modified: 2007-10-06 by antónio martins
Keywords: antarctica | south pole | claim |
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Flag of Antarctica, as proposed by the Treaty Secretariate

Antarctica flag
image by António Martins, 19 Jan 2007
See also:

Flag of Antarctica?

There is no official flag for Antarctica — mostly because there is no government or other authority to adopt such a flag.
Ole Andersen, 20 Feb 2000

The real flag of Antarctic was derived from the ATS emblem. [This flag is adopted by ATS as the flag of Antartica.]
Arnaud Leroy, 16 Nov 2006 and 18 Jan 2007

The various Antarctic treaties make it clear that no one country can claim any part of that continent as a political possession.
Ron Lahav, 14 Mar 2005


Flags in Antarctica

The information about the symbols of various Antarctic programs is so hard to get. The gentelman from the Ukrainian Antarctic Center informed me that to his knowledge all countries use their national flags there, but he might be wrong. It is possible that some of the logos are displayed in the form of flags, but I could not find any hard evidence of that.
Chris Kretowicz, 11 May 2001

From occasional footage on the Antarctic I’d say that both statements are correct: The stations fly the national flags, but they also display(ed?) the logo of their organisations, sometimes in the form of flags. Of course, the researchers may have other things on their minds than caring about flags, so it may be that these are only hoisted on special occasions.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 12 May 2001

Vexillacta 12 (June 2001) [vxl] includes a flag-oriented interview of Alain Hubert, a Belgian explorer who walked through Antarctica with Dixie Dansercoeur (3924 km in 99 days, November 1997 - February 1998). Hubert describes their arrival to the American base Amundsen-Scott, which is located on the geographical South Pole. Twelve national flags are hoisted there (outdoors) permanently in an arc. They represent the twelve countries which founded the Antarctic Treaty in 1958:

(I guess the South African flag was changed in due course and the Russian flag replaced the Soviet one.) This “frozen flag garden” was also shown in the last part of M. Palin’s TV-series From Pole to Pole.
Ivan Sache, 18 Jul 2001


Flags for Antarctica

It’s interesting to note that all countries that have or had claims over parts of Antarctica and that have of had adopted flags related to Antarctica, have taken the care of putting under these flags territories outside the Antarctic claims as well.
Jorge Candeias, 06 Jul 2002

Both Chile and Argentina take this to an extreme unheard of in other instances of borderline engeneering: Not only the 1st order division (resp. Magellan Region and Fireland) includes both disputed and non-disputed territories, but also the 2nd and even 3rd order divisions.
António Martins, 19 Jan 2007

With the usual exception, that is: in British Antarctic Territory there are no lands outside Antarctica.
Jorge Candeias, 06 Jul 2002

I daresay the United Kingdom was not so insecure in its claim that it felt the need to do so, as clearly putting other territories in with a claim creates an interesting legal precedent for any future actions which might take place. (It is a tactic used elsewhere in foreign policy, too.)
Colin Dobson, 18 Jan 2007


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