Apartheid-era South Africa was one of the most high-profile cases. While the organization is limited to consensus-based actions, it has in the past imposed sanctions and suspended members over human rights abuses. The Commonwealth’s members have at times clashed over the group’s stated principles. How has it dealt with human rights violations? These include democracy, human rights, freedom of expression, sustainable development, and racial and gender equality. In 2012, Commonwealth leaders agreed to an official constitution, the Commonwealth Charter, which formally commits member nations to sixteen shared principles.
It supports numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and charities, and hosts the Commonwealth Games, the world’s third-largest sporting event, every four years. The Secretariat provides training and technical assistance to members and has observed elections in more than forty countries. Government ministers of foreign affairs, trade, finance, education, health, and other areas also meet regularly to discuss Commonwealth affairs.
The largest of these, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), brings the group’s leaders together every two years to discuss policy priorities. The secretary-general heads the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat, created in 1965 to manage the more than eighty organizations run by the Commonwealth and to organize the group’s regular meetings. The members’ combined gross domestic product (GDP) tops $10 trillion, or about 14 percent of global GDP. (In recent years, several countries without historic ties to the UK, such as Rwanda and Mozambique, have also joined.) These countries, which apart from the UK include Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, and many others throughout Asia and Africa, account for some 2.4 billion people, or a third of the global population. The Commonwealth is an association of fifty-four nations that largely evolved out of the former territories of the British Empire. But supporters say the Commonwealth’s fast-growing economies, bolstered by a common history and shared language, offer an ideal platform for the UK to advance its trade agenda and deepen ties with like-minded countries. CancerĬritics have called the Commonwealth institutions outmoded and ineffective, and the group has at times drawn fire for its inconsistent response to human rights violations and antidemocratic governments. How New Tobacco Control Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on U.S.
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