About the Commonwealth

Quick facts about the Commonwealth

	53 member countries
	includes membership from all continents and oceans - both "North" and "South"
	one-quarter of world's nations and people
	embracing most of the world's races, religions, and political ideologies
	rich and poor, large and small
	similar education systems
	English as a common language
	almost 2/3 small states
	Commonwealth Day (second Monday of March)
	Her Majesty The Queen is the Head of the Commonwealth

What is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of more than 50 independent sovereign states, which provide support to each other, and work together toward international goals. The Commonwealth is described as a "family" of nations, originally linked together in the British Empire, and now building on their common heritage in language, culture and education, which enables them to work together in an atmosphere of greater trust and understanding than generally prevails among nations.

Bringing together some 1.7 billion people of many faiths, races, languages, traditions and levels of economic development, the Commonwealth represents almost one-third of the world's population.

The modern Commonwealth emerged in 1949 when it was agreed that India could remain a member on becoming a republic (prior to that, members shared a common allegiance to the British Crown).* Its growth accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s with the independence of many new member countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. [*Today, 32 Commonwealth countries are republics, 16 have constitutional monarchies with HM Queen Elizabeth II as their Head of State, and five have national monarchies of their own.]

All nations of the Commonwealth accept HM Queen Elizabeth II as the symbol of their free association and thus Head of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Secretary-General, appointed by member Governments, is His Excellency, the Rt. Hon. Donald C. McKinnon. He assumed office in April 2000 following a political career in New Zealand where Mr. McKinnon was the longest serving Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The association has member countries all over the globe, rich and poor, large and small. It includes the world's largest territory (Canada) and second largest in terms of population (India), and many of the smallest and most remote, including Nauru, the world's smallest republic. It includes the world's driest and most sparsely populated country (Namibia) and also Guyana with some of the world's best conserved tropical forests. Several of its members are small and isolated island states, others have the opposite disadvantage of being landlocked. It includes the world's first industrialised country (Britain) and a pioneering "Asian Tiger" (Singapore), and some of the most rapidly industrialising countries (Malaysia and Mauritius). Also among the Commonwealth members are some of the world's poorest countries in terms of GNP (Mozambique, Tanzania), and some of the most disadvantaged - notably Bangladesh with its vulnerability to flooding.

The Commonwealth:

	promotes partnership and co-operation among its members
	promotes understanding and tolerance among its citizens
	reduces prejudice, ignorance, disease and poverty
	promotes democracy and good governance, sustainable economic and social development, respect for human
	rights and the rule of law, gender equality and protection of the environment.

The strength of the Commonwealth is in continuing behind-the-scenes activities of mutual co-operation, consulting and co-ordination. In addition to the gathering of all Commonwealth leaders every two years, there are regular governmental meetings of Commonwealth Ministers if Finance, Education, Agriculture etc. some of the examples of mutual co-operation include:

	the establishment of regional investment funds
	assistance in helping many countries set up stock exchanges
	professional help in macro-economic policy, taxation and information and statistics management
	the creation and distribution of CS-DRMS, now one of the world's leading computerised systems for debt
	management, used by 40 Commonwealth and seven non-Commonwealth governments or central banks
	exchanges of highly skilled professionals and technicians
	the establishment of the Commonwealth of Learning

At a non-governmental level there are over 120 Commonwealth associations providing professional and technical consultation, co-operation and co-ordination of programmes and services.

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