“We realise closing this door may come as a disappointment - after all, flags often serve as a rallying cry to be seen, heard, recognised, and understood.” “Identities are fluid and unstoppable which makes mapping them to a formal unchanging universal character set incompatible,” Daniel added. Emoji bosses put a full stop on new emojis And there isn’t much room for the fluid nature of politics - countries change but Unicode additions are forever - once a character is added it can never be removed,” says Jennifer Daniel. And if those are added, what about the subdivisions of Japan or Namibia, or the Cantons of Liechtenstein? The inclusion of new flags will always continue to emphasize the exclusion of others. “If the Emoji Subcommittee recommends the addition of a Catalonia flag emoji, then it looks like favoritism unless all the other subdivisions of Spain are added. Hence, for category flags, there will no more new emojis added to the emoji set. Unicode says that the addition of one flag creates exclusivity at the expense of other flags. Specifically, it is the flag of emoji of any new category that will no longer be accepted. Emoji bosses have taken a big step on flag emojis! The Unicode Consortium, who manage emojis on a global level, have made a new announcement regarding the future of flag emojis.
