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Antarctica

Flag of Antarctica?
Flags in Antarctica
Flags for Antarctica

See also:

Current territorial claims (south of the 60°S parallel — each is unrecognized by all other countries):
- Provincia de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida y Islas del Atlántico Sur (includes Argentine claim, 25°W to 74°W)
- Australian Antarctic Territory (Australian claim, 160°E to 142°E and 136°E to 45°E)
- British Antarctic Territories (British claim, 20°W to 80°W)
- Región XII de Magallanes y Antártica Chilena (includes Chilean claim, 53°W to 90°W)
- Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (includes French claim, 142°E to 136°W)
- Ross Dependency (New Zealand claim, 150°W to 160°E)
- Dronning Mauds Land (Norwegian claim, 45°E to 20°E) and Per I Øy (Norwegian off shore claim)
Other territorial claims:
- Antártica Brasileira (Brazilian informal claim, 1986, 28°W to 53°W)
- Deutsch Neuschwabenland (German claim, 1939, approx. 20°E to 12°W and up to 75°S)
- South African Antarctica (unverified South African claim, 1963)
- (Russia and the United States have reserved the right to make claims, although they haven’t made any yet.)
Clickable map of Antarctica
Antarctica — flag proposals
«Breaking the Ice» project
Countries with any kind of local presence (as of 1999):
- Argentina
- Australia
- Brazil
- Chile
- China
- Ecuador (activity resumed in 2001)
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- India
- Italy
- Japan
- Netherlands (uses third part facilities)
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Peru
- Poland
- Russia
- Spain (activity started in 2000?)
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Sweden
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom (incl. a Scottish Antarctic Expedition and early British polar expeditions’ sledge flags)
- United States
- Uruguay
Antarctic Vexillological Association

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 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 explorator who walked through Antarctica with Dixie Dansercoeur (3924 km in 99 days, November 1997 - February 1998). Hubert describes their arrival to the American basis Amundsen-Scott, which is located on the geographical South Pole. Twelve national flags are hoisted there (outdoors) permanently in an ark. They represent the twelve countries which founded the Antarctica 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 puting under these flags therritories outside the antactic claims as well. With the usual exception, that is: in British Antarctic Territory there are no lands outside Antarctica.
Jorge Candeias, 06 Jul 2002

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