Kiribati

What do you know about the islands of Kiribati? We've provided a very brief introduction to Kitibati below, together with a set of printables for the Kiribati flag, including bookmarks, jigsaw, notebooking pages, three sizes of flag and a colouring page.

Butaritari, Kiribati (photo thanks to KevGuy4101, Creative Commons Licence)

A Little Geography

• The Independent and Sovereign Republic of Kiribati is a group of 32 atolls and islands in the Pacific Ocean, 21 of which are inhabited by the population of around 100,000.
• The islands lie roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
• The capital is Bairiki, on Tarawa Atoll.
• There are three main island groupings: the Gilbert Islands, the Phoenix Islands, and the Line Islands.
• Kiribati moved the International Date Line to include its easternmost islands on 1 January 1995, to make it the same day throughout the country.
• Kiribati is one of the world's poorest countries with few natural resources.
• Global warming and consequent rising sea-levels are encroaching on the land, and Kiribati is expected to be the first country to lose all its land to climate change. In April 2013 the President of Kiribati began to encourage the people of Kiribati to evacuate the islands and move elsewhere.

A Little History

• The first settlers in Kiribati came from Southeast Asia about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
• The first Europeans discovered Kiribati in the 1500s, with larger numbers arriving in the 1800s. The influx of Europeans in the 1800s caused problems for Kiribati, including the introduction of European diseases and local conflicts.
• Kiribati was previously known as the Gilbert Islands after the British explorer Thomas Gilbert, who first saw the islands in 1788. The British took control in 1892, and the islands became a British Colony in 1916.
• During World War II, the Japanese occupied the islands. The Battle of Tarawa was fought on 20–23 November 1943 at the Tarawa Atoll as part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. invasion of the Gilberts. Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans, and Americans died in the battle.
• Kiribati became independent from the UK in 1979.

And Some Interesting Facts

• Kiribati is the only nation in the world that lies in all four hemispheres of the world.
• The highest point of Kiribati is just 81 m above sea level.
• Two small uninhabited islands disappeared below the sea in 1999 due to rising sea levels.
• The national currency is the Australian dollar. 
• Kiribati is famous for Christmas Island (or Kiritimati), which has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world.

About the Kiribati Flag

The upper half of the flag has a red background with a gold frigatebird flying over a gold rising sun. The bottom half has three wavy horizontal blue stripes which represent the three oceans and three white wavy stripes which represent the country’s three groups; Gilbert, Pheonix and Line Islands. The sun has 17 rays as there were originally 17 islands.

Our Kiribati Resources