ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — As the Kurdistan Region approaches a referendum on independence and amateur banknotes and passports circulate the internet, a Kurdish flag emoji is something still missing on smartphone keyboards.
An emoji is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication. Examples are graphical representations of smiley faces, food, drinks, landscapes, and flags.
However the flags are not limited to independent states or nations. Taiwan, which officially belongs to the People’s Republic of China, has its own emoji. Many British and French overseas territories have their own emojis including Mayotte, officially an insular department and region of France.
While Unicode.org says “Anyone can submit a proposal for an emoji character,” a country or area must first have an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 3166 code that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions, like provinces or states.
There are 14 non-governmental experts with voting rights on ISO 3166 from France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, as well others from international communications organizations and the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
The ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Taiwan is included because of its special status ("Taiwan, Province of China") within the United Nations, while other areas like Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (“public bodies of the Netherlands”) and Svalbard and Jan Mayen (“integrated parts of Norway”) successfully have petitioned the maintenance agency for inclusion.
The maintenance agency must first approve the ISO code.
ISO 3166-1 codes are assigned to countries. ISO 3166-2 are for the representation of the names of principal administrative divisions of countries and territories included in ISO 3166-1.
Unicode members have announced the group is currently developing methods for representing the flags of subnational entities, which could potentially allow for the flags of places like Scotland or California or the Kurdistan Region in its current iteration.
Only then can a graphical flag representation be approved by Unicode, which is a computing industry standard administered by the Unicode Consortium that standardizes more than 128,000 characters like letters, along with other symbols like emojis.
Another option would be for computer operating system companies like Microsoft, Mac, Android or Google to be individually petitioned to render the emoji, which is why there are different emojis on different platforms.
Kurdistan underwent the process of obtaining a top-level domain “.krd” from 2013-14, allowing the government, companies, organizations and individuals “based in the region of Kurdistan” of obtain a web address like http://gov.krd” in the case of the Kurdish government.
Hiwa Afandi, the head of the KRG's Department of Information Technology, was responsible for pushing Unicode to add the full Kurdish alphabet characters and obtaining the top-level domain.
"We are all waiting to see if the referendum will lead to independence or not, once independent then everything else will be easy," he told Rudaw English.
The flag of the Kurdistan Region is distinguished by its 21-pointed yellow sun symbolizing Kurdish Newroz on March 21. The top third of the flag is red for those who sacrificed in the resistance struggle for freedom, the middle white is for peace and equality, while the green represents the beautiful landscapes, life, and vitality.
An emoji is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication. Examples are graphical representations of smiley faces, food, drinks, landscapes, and flags.
However the flags are not limited to independent states or nations. Taiwan, which officially belongs to the People’s Republic of China, has its own emoji. Many British and French overseas territories have their own emojis including Mayotte, officially an insular department and region of France.
While Unicode.org says “Anyone can submit a proposal for an emoji character,” a country or area must first have an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 3166 code that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions, like provinces or states.
There are 14 non-governmental experts with voting rights on ISO 3166 from France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, as well others from international communications organizations and the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
The ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Taiwan is included because of its special status ("Taiwan, Province of China") within the United Nations, while other areas like Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (“public bodies of the Netherlands”) and Svalbard and Jan Mayen (“integrated parts of Norway”) successfully have petitioned the maintenance agency for inclusion.
The maintenance agency must first approve the ISO code.
ISO 3166-1 codes are assigned to countries. ISO 3166-2 are for the representation of the names of principal administrative divisions of countries and territories included in ISO 3166-1.
Unicode members have announced the group is currently developing methods for representing the flags of subnational entities, which could potentially allow for the flags of places like Scotland or California or the Kurdistan Region in its current iteration.
Only then can a graphical flag representation be approved by Unicode, which is a computing industry standard administered by the Unicode Consortium that standardizes more than 128,000 characters like letters, along with other symbols like emojis.
Another option would be for computer operating system companies like Microsoft, Mac, Android or Google to be individually petitioned to render the emoji, which is why there are different emojis on different platforms.
Kurdistan underwent the process of obtaining a top-level domain “.krd” from 2013-14, allowing the government, companies, organizations and individuals “based in the region of Kurdistan” of obtain a web address like http://gov.krd” in the case of the Kurdish government.
Hiwa Afandi, the head of the KRG's Department of Information Technology, was responsible for pushing Unicode to add the full Kurdish alphabet characters and obtaining the top-level domain.
"We are all waiting to see if the referendum will lead to independence or not, once independent then everything else will be easy," he told Rudaw English.
The flag of the Kurdistan Region is distinguished by its 21-pointed yellow sun symbolizing Kurdish Newroz on March 21. The top third of the flag is red for those who sacrificed in the resistance struggle for freedom, the middle white is for peace and equality, while the green represents the beautiful landscapes, life, and vitality.
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