The flag of Haiti is a bicolour flag featuring two horizontal bands coloured blue and red, defaced by a white panel bearing the coat of arms. The coat of arms depicts a trophy of weapons atop a green hill and a royal palm symbolizing independence. The palm is topped by the Cap of Liberty. The motto L'Union fait la Force appears on a white ribbon below the arrangement. The flag of Haiti—along with those of Afghanistan, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Venezuela—is one of eight national flags whose designs incorporate a depiction of the flag itself.
L'emblême de la Nation Haïtienne est le Drapeau qui répond à la description suivante:
The English translation adopted by the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, D.C., reads:
The emblem of the Haitian Nation shall be a flag with the following description:
Contrary to the constitutional mandate, the white field is rarely rendered as a square. A rectangle with an 11:9 ratio has been adopted by the Haitian Ministry of Information and Coordination since 1987 or earlier.
The first purely Haitian flag was adopted on 18 May 1803, on the last day of the Congress of Arcahaie, about north of Port-au-Prince. Haitian lore holds that the newly appointed revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines created the flag by taking a French tricolor and ripping out the white center, which he discarded. He then asked Catherine Flon, his god-daughter, to sew the remaining bands together. The white pale removed, the blue was taken to represent Haiti's black citizens and the red the gens de couleur. The story is widely known in Haiti: the anniversary of the date is celebrated as the Flag and Universities Day and images of Catherine Flon have appeared on Haitian currency and stamps. Following his proclamation as Emperor Jacques I, Dessalines promulgated a new constitution on 20 May 1805. In it, the colors of the flag were altered to black and red. This flag being subsequently adopted by Henri Christophe, the republicans under Alexandre Pétion returned to the colors blue and red, subsequently turning them horizontal and adding the newly adopted Haitian coat of arms. During the period of the Haitian Empire of Faustin I, his coat of arms was used on the flag and for official functions, but it was subsequently abandoned upon his removal from office. Between 1964 and 1986, the family dictatorships of François "Papa Doc" and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier returned to Dessalines' black and red design. They included the national coat of arms, but altered the flags in its trophy to black as well. Because the coat of arms is only used for national and military flags, whereas the civil flag consists solely of the two unaugmented horizontal bands, it was discovered at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin that Haiti and Liechtenstein were using the same flag. This led to the addition of a crown to the design of the flag of Liechtenstein.
