File:Barbuda Council flag.jpg

English: The Barbuda Council flag is red on horizontal green with a yellow disc in the center that occupies almost 80% of the height of the flag; inside the disc there is a typical island bird the "Frigate bird" with its characteristic red maw.

In 1996 I wrote to all the parties on the island and to the Island Council asking for the local flag. I got no answer. I also asked friends in the Caribbean and one of them informed me of a red, black and blue flag (that could correspond to the Barbuda Independence Movement), although the blue color would be green, but on television the two colors are easily confused. These three colors are used by various independence movements in some Caribbean islands as they are the traditional colors of African Americans, colors popularized by Marcus Garvey (1919).

Not getting an answer from the island I sent a second set of letters in 1997 and this time too I was left with no answer. I took it for granted that my question had been ignored.

Actually at that time no flag represented the island. Apart from the possible colors of the Barbuda Independence Movement (founded in 1983) the flags of the other parties existed, but did not represent the island. The green color was typical of the Barbuda Peoples Movement (BPM) with yellow letters (and the yellow color is used by the youth branch), the New Barbuda Development Movement probably the color orange and the Barbuda National Party color is unknown to me (maybe blue?) . Already in the 21st century a new political party emerged, the "Barbudans for a better Barbuda", the colors of which I do not know. Only the BPM has parliamentary representation (only one MP from the island goes to St Johns Parliament)

It is possible that my letters or one of them came into the hands of Council member Hakim Akbar, a local businessman (today already deceased) who was in charge of the Economy Department, who decided to design a flag to fill the gap that the letter revealed. This flag was presented to the Council with the support of the councilwoman Darlena Beazer, the current spokeswoman for the Council, and this body adopted the flag (1997); over time it has gained popularity to become an unofficial symbol of the island. On the web you can find several sites where the flag is drawn. The drawings do not correspond exactly to how they look in the photos because surely the sizes of the central disk and the exact design of the frigate bird are not regulated and flags have been manufactured with certain differences.