OCEANIA

Marshall Islands

A far-flung constellation of coral atolls in the central Pacific, the Marshall Islands invented a navigation system using maps woven from sticks to chart the ocean swells.

WHAT THE FLAG MEANS ◢

A blue field crossed by two widening diagonal stripes of orange over white rising from the lower hoist, with a large white star of twenty-four rays in the upper hoist, four of them elongated. The design is conventionally read as the Pacific in the blue and the equator in the rising band, with the orange and white stripes standing for the Ralik and Ratak chains and for sunset and sunrise, the twenty-four rays for the electoral districts, and the four long rays for the centres at Majuro, Ebeye, Jaluit and Wotje.

Marshall Islands FACTS ◢

Capital	Majuro
Continent	Oceania
Population	42,418 (2021)
Area	181 km²
Population density	234/km²
Currency	United States dollar (USD)
Main languages	English, Marshallese
Calling code	+692
Internet TLD	.mh
Time zone	UTC+12:00
Drives on the	Right
ISO codes	MH / MHL

DID YOU KNOW? ◢

Its traditional navigators read ocean swells using 'stick charts' woven from palm ribs and shells.
Bikini Atoll, once a nuclear testing site, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The country consists of more than 1,000 islands and islets spread across a vast stretch of ocean.
It uses the US dollar as its currency and sits close to the International Date Line.