The flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina contains a wide medium blue vertical band on the fly side with a yellow right triangle abutting the band and the top of the flag. … The flag features colors often associated with neutrality and peace – white, blue, and yellow. Bosnia, with its mixed ethnic population, never developed distinctive national symbols of its own. Under communist-led Yugoslavia from 1946 to 1991–92, for example, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia simply used a red banner with a small version of the Yugoslav national flag in the canton. At the time independence was proclaimed on March 3, 1992, no flag existed that was acceptable to the country’s Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats. The Bosnian-dominated government, therefore, adopted what it hoped would be a neutral symbol from the far past. It chose the coat of arms used by King Stjepan Tomaš, which is attributed to the greatest medieval Bosnian ruler. That blue shield with a white diagonal stripe separating six golden fleurs-de-lis was placed in the center of a white flag.